I like that she points out that it can be really helpful for an up-and-coming new business to have people work for free. You don't say!
James: please don't kill Ben. Nobody else is left who really understands how to make the website work.
I used to work as a Movable Type developer, so if Neb's head bursts like an overripe melon, I'll step up. I can't really bring the required grammar pedantry and little-bitchiness, though.
"People who work for free are far hungrier than anybody who has a salary, so they're going to outperform, they're going to try to please..."Holy fucking shit. What are the chances Congress will debate whether it needs to approve a declaration of class war? BAHAHAHAHA.
We've got, like, a reserve army of the employed but unpaid.
Hey movable type developers, why is the spacing like that after blockquotes?
I wonder why the wrath of the Labor Department, or whoever is responsible for these things, doesn't fall heavily on those industries in which unpaid FLSA-violating "internships" are known to be the norm
About a year ago the DOL issued stricter guidelines about whether and when unpaid internships were permissible. (Basically, an internship must be primarily educational -- if you're getting a lot of usable work out of someone who isn't getting paid, you're probably violating the law.) Unfortunately, which industries are targeted for audit seems to be largely a question of political pressure. For example, in my home state, the agency responsible for enforcement of such laws has in the past been maddeningly and suspiciously disinclined to investigate and remediate violations in the major industry for which my hometown is well-known, despite the rampancy and flagrancy of the abuses.
Hey movable type developers, why is the spacing like that after blockquotes?
You lose your paragraph formatting. If you did <blockquote>I'm a moral cripple! I take pennies from blind men begging in the street</blockquote><p>Well, duh.</p> it would work.
I think that's actually an idiosyncracy of Unfogged. I believe it doesn't come up if you wrap everything in <p> tags. Let's see!
On metafilter some guy complained,
The problem it seems is that you do not want people to have the right to make a choice of what they do with their own bodies. Slavery is not a choice. Working for free is.
One wonders whether he would also approve of a system in which workers were given the choice to accept time-and-a-half pay for overtime or, on the other hand, to work unpaid overtime. If everyone, for fear of reprisal and replacement, opted for unpaid overtime, that would be their choice, right?
Someone else on MeFi linked a HuffPo (LOOK at all these cAmelCaps I mean how HIGH do you even have to BE) article in which the following occurred:
According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, some schools fear that the restrictions might mean fewer internship opportunities for students.
[Messiah College director of internships Michael] True worried that "employers would just pull in the carpet and say, 'I'm sorry, we're not going to offer those,'" he said. "'This is just too big a risk for us.'"
I find it odd that Michael True would be worried that his students might have less opportunity to be illegally exploited.
None of these employers said they were concerned that they were violating the law -- whether or not they actually are...
The story of American labor law, 1947 - present.
Some real first-world problems:
"It's really hard as a single entrepreneur to babysit these people who need to learn. They're not making any money, so you have to be very patient," Green says.
I don't usually read Fortune, so maybe, unbeknownst to me, the tone of that article isn't unusual for them, but the writer does seem to be struggling to write a 'straight' piece. I mean, with a subsection titled "The challenges of hiring and managing modern day serfs"? Not to mention so many other lines in the piece. The writer is surely presenting us with her barely-hidden contempt for these grifters employers. Right?
Obviously it makes sense to hire people who make no money and have no job security, because they're going to work harder. Can't fault them for that. But also, they probably need tax breaks so they can babysit their unpaid employees who don't know anything.
I've been doing a fair bit of babysitting unpaid college-aged workers and that is definitely a moral quandary, because on the one hand, I have a lot of stuff I want them to do, but on the other hand, I keep worrying about whether or not this experience is worthwhile for their education or whatever. Also, I really need them to do stuff (as I may have mentioned) but they could bolt at any time at no personal cost. Very tricky!
So much of that piece reads like an Onion story it's amazing. I like this:
"We don't have a system in this country where you can work for free," says Jay A. Zweig, a partner who works in employment law at Bryan Cave in Phoenix.
I think it might actually be untrue: I'm thinking of the Louisiana State Penitentiary farm. Or do they get paid there?
So much of that piece reads like an Onion story it's amazing.
This was my exact thought.
More seriously, interns training for complex jobs can require a lot of 'management', where that means telling them 'do this, now do that' for hours on end. So they aren't necessarily productive. But if you're a professional, and you want to ease back a bit come 50+ and let the juniors take up the burden, you'll need to have trained them. That's before we get to any wider consideration of societal duties.
There was a recent Ask Metafilter post in which the questioner wanted to know if he was mistaken in thinking that the current generation of young interns is "less willing to work their asses off," displaying their "greater sense of entitlement." I saw red. Who exactly has the inflated sense of entitlement in this scenario, the people working not quite at peak passion for no pay, or the people who feel that their unpaid workers owe them even more unpaid attention and labor? I mean, really.
So they aren't necessarily productive
Yeah, in fact, they aren't supposed to be very productive, because the internship is supposed to be for their benefit, not yours.
Is it unreasonable to speculate that the job training provided by this serfdom is viewed as a healthily privatized approach to the re-training of workers in need of new skills? There's no need to get the government involved in that shit, man!
Of course, the unpaid workers involved don't particularly seem to be older workers in need of skills re-training, so that angle doesn't really seem to work.
We pay all our interns, though. At least, I'm told we do.
I wonder if much of the legwork on this was done by an unpaid intern.
I was thinking the HuffPo (ob CaMeLCap) writers' strike would lead to something big.
Then I remembered I thought the same think when Cokie Roberts made the un(der)paid intern her cause in 2004.
"It's something that really makes me nuts," said Cokie Roberts, an ABC News correspondent who spoke out about the problem on Capitol Hill several weeks ago at a gathering of Congressional interns. "By setting up unpaid internship programs, it seems to me that without completely recognizing it, it sets up a system where you are making it ever more difficult for people who don't have economic advantages to catch up."
Is it unreasonable to speculate that the job training provided by this serfdom is viewed as a healthily privatized approach to the re-training of workers in need of new skills?
Yes.
This line really caters to my personal taste for passive-aggressive neoliberalism:
"A lot of employers don't get that the law is not about personal responsibility or agreements between consenting adults; it's about getting the pay to people as the law requires," Thompson says.
There was a recent Ask Metafilter post in which the questioner wanted to know if he was mistaken in thinking that the current generation of young interns is "less willing to work their asses off," displaying their "greater sense of entitlement."
This kind of thing is especially annoying to hear because when the Baby Boomers were coming of age, jobs were growing on trees compared to this past decade.
displaying their "greater sense of entitlement."
Any push for equality is going to look like that from the perspective of the people who've been having it good. 'Sense of entitlement' always needs context. A disabled person can have a sense of entitlement wrt use of a disabled parking space, for instance.
At my last company, I tried to argue against an inferior health-care option that they wanted to offer by saying that it's in a company's interest for their employees to have good health care so they can focus on their work and not be distracted by health care bills and dealing with insurance companies. How focused can your employees be if half their brain is occupied with wondering where rent and their next meal is coming from?
Also relevant: Should I Work For Free?
I believe it is conventional at this point to say "Becks!".
How focused can your employees be if half their brain is occupied with wondering where rent and their next meal is coming from?
Maybe not very focused, but on the other hand, maybe as focused as is necessary!
19: Yes, but it's out of the kindness of Louisiana's collective heart.
2, 32: Becks is going to get Ben killed.
Today's Entrepeneur magazine:
"Ten Laws that You Can Freely Discuss Breaking with the Media with No Fear of Investigation"
"Don't Have a Union-Busting Republican Governor? Get One!"
"How to Get Unpaid Employees to Pay for their Own Mandatory Drug Tests"
"If GE Is Too Good to Pay Taxes So Are You"
"Lower Telecom Expenses by Building a Local Third-World Labor Climate"
"Hey You Interns, Get Off My Lawn!"
I am waiting for KR to present the merits of Praktikants over those of interns.
28: I should have written that more clearly, but the idea was that the offending (non-)employers might -- might could -- try to justify their practices in those terms. That's what the "is viewed as" was meant to indicate.
I have no idea why I'd be looking for a plausible defense on their behalf; just thinking about what the free-market-capitalism-forever-yay! crowd could try to say in its defense, and whether a response to that can be constructed that doesn't just point to the FLSA. The latter isn't granted much respect on its own, apparently.
30: And it is also an evergreen complaint (the attitude in general, not necessarily the unpaid part). See Studs Terkel's Working.
up next, a helpful Fortune article about getting cheap workers by luring foreigners with the promise of one job, and then seizing their passport and not returning until they "earn" it back by working at another job they might not have taken if they were in a better negotiating position.
Speaking of agreements between consenting adults, USAians might have missed this story: 'Harrow woman convicted of keeping Tanzanian as slave'.
Mwanahamisi Mruke was "far hungrier" too. It's just a matter of imagination. Fortune magazine could organise awards: Best effort at a literal realisation of a common metaphor for exploitation.
A unpaid volunteer job saved my life, an 18-month story (epiphany!) told in under five minutes.
Haven't read the linked article yet, so maybe it says this, but in my view, as someone who's worked in business settings with people who are interns and have been interns, I'd say the number one argument against internships is that they don't produce a very high quality batch of new employees.
Consider: You're a 21 year old college graduate from an upper middle class family, who takes 18 months worth of internships with companies in your field while your parents foot the bill. So rather than having some exposure to what it's actually like to work for a living, you get still more of this delayed adolescence where you're not really responsible for anything -- not your work, not your sustenance. So you come into your first job (and I've seen many, many kids like this) at 23 without ever having had the experience of being 100% responsible for yourself. You feel, understandably, as though you are entitled to a fast-track career where you don't have to do all that much work, and where someone else is going to make your decisions for you. I've seen a number of people who just can't recover from that. And a much larger number who wind up fucking around for two or three years that they could have been really learning and growing in their jobs, because they were so bamboozled when they finally started working for a living.
I think it would be far more preferable from a long-term standpoint for employers to hire college graduates to do menial work for low-ish, but legal, pay, and run some voluntary after-work seminars about meta-career skills. Otherwise, you're looking at a marching morons scenario where all the way up the chain of command there are people who've never really had to live with the reality of work life.
I'm interested in your thoughts after you read the linked article, Natilo.
I hate the intern system, but it also works for people who have been out of work for a long time who volunteer for broke non-profits.
Although this rarely happens, in a good internship situation, there ought to be an educational component where the organization is putting real effort to teaching/training someone and not just treating the person as an employee.
For people on SSDI, for example, who have been out of work for a long time, it's often better to volunteer in an office so that they can get references and maybe become an admin than to work in retail--which is not good for (anyone really, but especially) people with psychiatric disabilities.
Just so you all know, at least in MA prisoners who work do get paid. I mean, it's not minimum wage or anything (more like 20 cents an hour), and they have to pay 3 or 4 times as much for things, but they don't have jobs that don't pay.
My cousin did an unpaid internship at the Hague, and it did after a year working for an immigration lawyer lead to paid work prosecuting war crimes in Cambodia. He doesn't sound entitled unlike his friend Fe/lipe Cou/steau, but he wouldn't have ever gotten that job without the family being able to help when they could.
Didn't LB have a law school grad who was volunteering at her office so that she could maintain legal skills, since she couldn't get a job? I suppose that the government is exempt from this stuff?
I feel like some people are using "volunteer" and "unpaid internship" interchangeably -- there's a difference between offering free services to a nonprofit or charity and offering free services to a profit-making business.
It's funny the mental disconnect that can come around these issues. I knew we had internships, I knew we had minimum wage laws, but it never occurred to me that they might conflict until that DOL story last year.
it's not minimum wage or anything (more like 20 cents an hour), and they have to pay 3 or 4 times as much for things, but : they don't have jobs that don't pay.
Fixed.
I mean, it's not minimum wage or anything (more like 20 cents an hour), and they have to pay 3 or 4 times as much for things, but they don't have jobs that don't pay.
Twenty cents an hour, and having to pay three to four times as much for goods, may technically add up to "they get paid", but come the fuck on.
I think you didn't compeltely fix that, fm; it still says the same thing. Maybe you meant to strike the second "don't" as well.
Actually the first, but point taken. Come the fuck on!
Slaves in the old South got paid too. Room and board ... clothes ... moving expenses ... sometimes the master would even pay for their wedding. And they didn't have non-slave families to worry about providing for.
50: There's more conflation than that. What we think of as volunteering doesn't involve job training except as a side effect or benefit; internships do, ostensibly, do so; and then there's just working at what's basically a real job, for free.
57 cont'd: There's been an ongoing discussion in the world of labor and economics about the shift from (paid) on-the-job training to the eventual disappearance of such. I haven't read much in detail, but it's partly, if not chiefly, a function of the waning of the life-long company employee. Companies aren't so big on that any more, because long-term employees become benefits drains. The result is that people -- which we call workers -- are on their own with respect to training, and are increasingly expected to come to the job fully suited for it.
I hear that this has resulted in a serious problem in the skills pool for certain types of work, like maintaining phone lines or railroad engineering or maintenance of the power grid.
So increasing numbers of employers attempt to free ride on the training efforts of other employers. Possibly, they tell themselves that institutions deliver - or ought to deliver - all of the training that's needed.
An game that could be played in idle moments: which will be the critical loss of technical capacity - owing to a plain lack of people to do it any more - that really hurts the rich in a way that they notice? Nobody with adequate skills to build jet engines? No one capable of designing semiconductor componentry?
13 is particularly rich given that for three years running I had calls from that college on the Thursday or Friday of Memorial Day weekend urgently demanding requesting that we provide a full-time, summer-long internship for one of their students.
N.b. We do not customarily provide internships, although I've done them on occasion when we have a particular high school or college student who has a time-limited, well-defined scope of learning, reasonable goals, and can pass all of our other filters.
60 - Not to mention that employees are also expected to pay for a lot of the training they used to get from apprenticeship, by getting degrees from trade schools.
Possibly, they tell themselves that institutions deliver - or ought to deliver - all of the training that's needed.
Ought to deliver, at least. The proper role of the modern college or university is to provide specific job training, doncha know.
If you lack the capital to pay the people whom you expect to work for you, perhaps (i) your startup business plan needs revision, (ii) your capital-raising efforts demand more and better of your own (paid or unpaid) work and/or (iii) you aren't the canny businessperson that you wish to convince the Fortune writer you are.
Which is not only a futile hope: it cuts against the notion that private industry is the centre of innovation. Where is this technical knowledge supposed to be located? The specific, only partly codified stuff that makes things work?
64: I think the Fortune article, if it's being straight in the first place, is pointing out that cheaper labor (free, even) is indeed a canny business model. Except for the part about how you have to keep hand-holding these freaking unpaid workers, which is time-consuming.
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Perhaps by some sort of karmic balancing act, this week's Modern Love is funny.
(It would have been funnier if she had given the guy a fatal heart attack. Though then she would have had to learn a life lesson, which would have been less funny.)
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If 65 is to 63, I don't really see why you'd think it's futile. It seems to be remarkably successful in a number of areas. Recall the degree program in which The Sartorialist took part, for instance, not to mention the fact that one can major in, say, marketing, and I'm pretty sure you can get a computer science degree without studying, say, computability.
Further to 64: I feel that I should emphasize that the Fortune subject's self-presentation is, perhaps unconsciously, perhaps not, typical of the Asperger's-as-aptitude-for-an-alienated-age framing of the people whose feet too many writers at the Times and other publications (e.g., James Fallows at the Atlantic, of whom I used to think better) are eager to kiss who have made a great deal of money lately: cf. the Facebook guy, the Gawker Media guy, whomever else J/eff J/arvis and/or Gl/ad/well may be lionizing profiling lately. Sometimes I miss the Jack Welch sort of stuffed shirt and, in particular, the slightly more human, if not humane, rough parts to that type's obsession with the numbers and CNBC.
Labor law may distinguish between internships at non-profit and for-profit organizations (I'm not completely sure), but at the level of the intern doing work, it's doesn't really feel that different.
I think volunteering has its own specific definition.
Yes and no, Becks. Partners Healthcare is the largest employer in MA, and they make a ton of money, but it's a non-profit. They have a well-organized volunteer department, but they could easily be using someone else for free as an intern when they should be paying them.
53 and 54: Oh, it totally and completely sucks. I'm just saying that nominally they aren't expected to work in the factory or as the records keeper guy for free.
Maybe this will cheer The Mineshaft up: the Conservatives had an electoral disaster of historic proportion here in Bäden-Württemberg; it looks like they'll be out of power for the first time since '52, with a first-ever Green 'governor' leading a Green/Social-Dem coalition. And the classical-liberal FDP did even worse, barely breaking the 5% hurdle needed to win any seats at all.
As for me, I'm happy about the Green/SDP thing, but not so happy about the FDP part. And now I'll bike downtown to see if the Green's election-party is still going. So as to discuss politics. As opposed to taking advantage of young Greens drunk on victory.
If they're only drunk on victory, it's totally ethical.
70: Yes, see this DOL factsheet, 10b03(c) and (d). There's a clear distinction between volunteering and working for a nonprofit.
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As for me, I'm happy about the Green/SDP thing, but not so happy about the FDP part.
Cheers me up, including (maybe especially) the FDP part. Well, just a little, I have a long way to go to "cheerful."
Japanese Disaster Impact on global supply chains and output/prices. This could be very fucking bad news. When will Tokyo factories get their power back? Like never? Buy electronics now, if prices haven't already spiked in anticipation.
And of course the way my mind works, if it does, is how will the Green/SDP coalition respond if/when the economy crashes again this year? Will voters blame the left?
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45: I think it would be far more preferable from a long-term standpoint for employers to hire college graduates to do menial work for low-ish, but legal, pay, and run some voluntary after-work seminars about meta-career skills.
Hmm... I didn't RTFA, this is coming from someone with one internship and one part-time job (hopefully soon-to-be two internships and one p-tj; the first internship I can now do from home), and perhaps this can be entirely explained by parsimon in 58, but what on earth did companies do before this casualization and intern-ization of the entry-level labor force? Weren't a greater number of entry-levelers without a college degree too, back in the day? Did they have to attend after-work nonsense to get job skills, etc. and if not, why wouldn't what worked for them work for us now?
I don't know if the death of the life-long company employee is related to the "move up or move out" model of promotion (and termination), but it's certainly disheartening to see for smart slackers who might've planned to grind in some functionary role they can quickly master so as to retain intellectual and spiritual energy for their extra-work life, hobbies, whatever (I'm thinking here primarily of writers who don't want to make, say, writing into a career, autodidacts and the like, etc.).
Apparently there's a glut of librarians, I'm looking into the post-office...
Weren't a greater number of entry-levelers without a college degree too, back in the day?
There are relatively few jobs whose successful performance actually requires a college education.
Henry Miller and Charles Bukowski say go for it.
Read the article. Sure not much meat there, is there?
So basically, what I'm getting from the article, is that things are probably not that much different from the old days, at least when it comes to big, stuffed-shirt corporations, who have HR and Legal departments to check the WILD AND CRAZY notions of new managers. However, there are a few WACKY START-UPS who are willing to play fast and loose with employment law, because (a) their crimes are too small to attract much attention from the federal government, and (b) they're probably going to be out of business in a couple of years anyway, when everyone realizes their business models don't make sense, ethically or economically.
I still say interns are usually a bad bet, both in terms of what the individual firms and interns get out of it, and in terms of what it does to the labor force as a whole.
77:In the 50s and 60s, IIRC correctly, the Japanese big companies had 3 months up of inhouse school after hiring. Totally non-productive. If I also remember, an employee had to post a bond (1 years wages? ) or get co-signed for by a senior superior manager.
Google "employment bond." They still have them in India.
I'd say the number one argument against internships is that they don't produce a very high quality batch of new employees.
I'd have thought the number one argument against them is they entrench social class, diminish economic and social mobility, and are just another fucking scam via which those who already have ensure they fucking keep it.
My first job out of college didn't require a college degree. There was about a week of pure training at a slightly lower wage, then you were on the normal wage scale (initial pay depended on education, but there was no limit once/if you got a raise). It was a small company, and it seems the path up (if any) was to get to middle-management and then go back on the job market to try to work somewhere bigger. I don't think that happened very often; most people were students or just out of college and moved on fairly quickly to either other jobs or grad school, without moving up within the company first.
There are relatively few no jobs outside teaching, research, science and engineering whose successful performance actually requires a college education.
Say what you mean.
83: I think Natilo meant the number one argument that someone who doesn't give a fuck about entrenching social class or diminishing economic mobility might respect.
So basically, what I'm getting from the article, is that things are probably not that much different from the old days, at least when it comes to big, stuffed-shirt corporations, who have HR and Legal departments to check the WILD AND CRAZY notions of new managers.
Yeah, big stuffed-shirt corporations like major publishing houses definitely don't rely on unpaid labor.
83 and 84 just about cover it.
Law doesn't, technically, require a college degree: it used to be that the degree that is now called a "J.D." was pursued instead of a bachelor's degree, rather than subsequent to it, and I believe that even now you can become eligible to take the bar without a J.D. if you've worked in some kind of apprentice-like capacity with an attorney for long enough. (This option is probably not much pursued any longer, even if it is available.)
86: Medicine, law and architecture kind of do now too.
91: That option requires a BA. It exists in California, but I don't know where else.
LLB, the old term for the initital legal degree, was a bachelor's even though that lasted long after everyone going to law school had a BA.
According to books and movies, assassins tend to follow the apprenticeship model to the detriment of somebody, usually. Perhaps they ought to consider professional schools with tests and certifications.
91: That option requires a BA
It may require a BA, and in that sense, having a BA may be necessary for successful lawyering one way or another, but any number of job ads indicate that the applicant must have a BA even though the having of the BA is not directly relevant to the performance of the job. The formal requirement of a BA does not indicate whether a college education is a substantive requirement of a job.
95 is a fair point. The only difference being that taking the California Bar Exam, i.e. getting a license, requires the B.A., so it's ever so slightly different from a job description requiring a BA.
Isn't there something in Catch Me if You Can where DiCaprio's character was pretending to do almost all of the jobs he did, except for lawyering, since he really was a lawyer because he passed the bar exam?
I think there might be a few states where passing the bar is enough.
You can't just take the bar. A few states let you "read the law" -- apparently some sort of multi-year apprenticeship with a licensed lawyer -- before you take the bar; otherwise, you have to have a JD from an accredited school, or an LLM if you also have a law degree from overseas.
97: Surely if he had only got as far as passing the bar, he would still more or less be pretending to be a lawyer.
I meant prior to going into the courtroom. I'm pretty sure, in the movie at least, he actually goes into open court and practices after passing the exam. This was in the 50s or 60s, of course.
Wikipedia has a bit about current practice in reading the law.
Didn't LB have a law school grad who was volunteering at her office so that she could maintain legal skills, since she couldn't get a job? I suppose that the government is exempt from this stuff?
We do, and I am wracked with guilt on her behalf. She's been with us for eighteen months or so, working full-time and usefully, but completely unpaid. At this point, she's a catch for anyone who hires her: we've been working her ass off, and so she has an unusual amount of courtroom experience for someone of her seniority. But the market is dreadful, and it's much easier to get a job straight out of law school than when you've been out for a year or two. She's actually senior enough now (out almost two years), that someone should hire her soon: she's gotten to the point where it would be reasonably conventional for her to switch jobs.
And what we're doing (giving her a standard, full-time, useful-work-performing job but not paying her) would be wildly illegal if a private company did it. We do have some weirdo exemption that lets us use volunteers like that.
I'm with Natillo; the story appears to be more of a creation of the writer than anything else. They found some idiots who are employing people without paying them and are calling them 'interns'. That isn't too different from the Depression when people would volunteer to work for free because they needed and hoped for an eventual job.
83: I'd have thought the number one argument against them is they entrench social class, diminish economic and social mobility, and are just another fucking scam via which those who already have ensure they fucking keep it.
I'm sure it's about people keeping what they have so much as simply ensuring that the newbies are the 'right' kind of people. The right kind of people, of course, are the kind of people that can (effectively) buy their kids internships. (It can't be the economics, because the economics of riding herd on unpaid college students (or any unpaid labor) is going to make it a break even proposition, at best.) The whole thing is the upper-class equivalent of doing credit checks on potential employees.
58: The result is that people -- which we call workers -- are on their own with respect to training, and are increasingly expected to come to the job fully suited for it. I hear that this has resulted in a serious problem in the skills pool for certain types of work, like maintaining phone lines or railroad engineering or maintenance of the power grid.
I don't really think that's true. The issue is that companies don't want to hire a lot of employees, so they focus on overworking the ones they have. (It's 'more productive'.) Of course, sometimes they do need more employees, so they advertise some ridiculous list of qualifications. (It's ridiculous because it turns out that if anyone actually had that set of qualifications, they'd demand a lot more than the pay offered.) Then they hire whichever horse jumps highest and trains them. (This is endemic to the computer industry.)
DeLong linked to the Atlanta Fed guy citing some anecdotes (in support of the idea of structural problems in the labor market) indicating that companies had upgraded their supply chain software and then 'couldn't' find people with skills to use the software. Bah. Either it's the worst software ever and no one can learn it in six months (much less the two years since the bottom), which is unlikely, or it's just new and they don't want to pay to train people, so then they bitch people 'don't have the needed skills'.
When there is a genuine short of some skill, such as mainframe programming skills prior to Y2K, suddenly the sky was the limit on pay... and then companies had no problem finding people to do the job.
Companies DO have problems with finding smart people with real skills willing to work long hours for little pay, all without training.
This makes Newt Gingrich cry.
max
['If the economy was booming, the complaints would be same, and yet somehow people would be found to work. It's just that wages would be rising.']
9
... Unfortunately, which industries are targeted for audit seems to be largely a question of political pressure. For example, in my home state, the agency responsible for enforcement of such laws has in the past been maddeningly and suspiciously disinclined to investigate and remediate violations in the major industry for which my hometown is well-known, despite the rampancy and flagrancy of the abuses.
If clear violations are widespread why doesn't someone file a class action lawsuit? I can recall several such lawsuits.
It is indeed a puzzle why injustice persists despite the existence of the American legal system.
the story appears to be more of a creation of the writer than anything else
Wait, what? I try never to blame journalistic ignorance or mendacity for what can be attributed to class warfare.
104: This is basically the legal system equivalent of the "impossible to find five dollars" microeconomics joke,
Jesus, you would not believe how difficult it is to acquire a copy of Moscow to the End of the Line if one limits oneself to checking the shelves of bookstores one happens to be near.
110: And an artfully close relative of Ben's trigger.
How do you know you're in a class war?
You're alive.
How do you know you're losing the class war?
You're alive (to a first degree of approximation).
What should you do?
Comment harder.
106 105: Not enough Batman.
This is the answer to many questions.
111: Not in my experience, given that Powell's is nearby, but I encourage the use of bookfinder.com for those in less privileged situations.
But, I should add, everyone must read it! And then we could have a meetup and try out the recipes.
115: Ready access to information is the new rich.
83: Actually, I'm not sure that internships per se are having such a great effect on entrenching social class & diminishing economic and social mobility. I think if you made internships in their current form illegal you'd still see pretty much the same crew of people ascending to the heights of the various professions. Just because dreary little Reptilian Q. Cork-Nethersole IV can't get an internship right out of college, and has to gain some experience in a different context, hardly guarantees that brilliant Buster Boilermaker from the wrong side of the tracks now has a shot at becoming America's Next Top Architect.
What are the two industries that are coming up as most exploitative of their interns? Architecture and publishing, with design running a close third. (A) Those are fairly small industries, and (B) making a go of it in them is pretty chancy, even with a very strong wind at your back. The kind of internships that I saw in the brokerage industry were actually pretty plum gigs -- paid above minimum wage, equal time training and doing gofer work, access to both upper management in training and the level of supervisors and managers who might actually be in a position to hire you after college. But they didn't really seem to do much good for the interns, most of whom wound up being folx with a foot in the door already anyway.
In my ideal world, unpaid internships would only be available for people enrolled in post-secondary education, there'd be lots and lots of paid training opportunities, and the workers would control the means of production.
117: Especially if you use bittorrent sites.
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Dear America: please learn to write better. Not altogether better, because then you wouldn't hire me to proof your screenplays, but a little better, so doing it wouldn't make me cry so.
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Some insane Falun Gong guys I met at a party want me to comment on and proof their Falun Gong propaganda screenplay. I'm thinking about saying yes.
re: 118
There are entire professions where the only way to get a foot in the door is via internships. Those professions are essentially closed to those from lower income backgrounds. If that isn't entrenching social class and, etc I don't know what is.
. I think if you made internships in their current form illegal you'd still see pretty much the same crew of people ascending to the heights of the various professions.
Probably. Yes, class power is exercised via lots of methods, but gate-keeping via unpaid labour is one of them and I'd still fucking ban it.
120: Bonsaisue and I were asked (by a cousin of one of us, as a favor to some of the cousin's friends) to go over and comment on a screenplay adapting a classic novel to a modern setting. We were asked because we have scientific backgrounds, and were thus not well represented in the set of people in their scene. So we each read it and... it was... awful. Just about the worst thing ever.
We made some comments regarding how scientists generally are, and they way they talk to one another (and especially in conference settings)... and about some really basic, really bad, continuity errors.
Amazingly, they were surprised that we'd caught the continuity errors. These weren't subtle, and it wasn't time-travel: it was major character mistakes (names, recent pasts, etc).
On the other hand, last we saw (juuuust before imdb went all "close hold" on items "in development"), some people were attaching to it. At least one or two big surprises.
I don't think I can in good conscience read their screenplay and then leak it here for comments, but it's tempting. Apparently it's a martial arts movie that also contains a long trial scene in which the basic Falun Gong principles are explained in detail. They want me to comment on the trial scenes.
Oh, and this would be in exchange for free sq/ash lessons. Googleproofed because the Fa/lun G/ong s/quash l/esson c/ombo has to be unusual.
If they're only drunk on victory, it's totally ethical.
So, since you all demanded reports (for values of 'you all' that include 'none of you'): well, the election-party had already ended by the time I had showered, shaved, made myself presentable, confronted an inexplicably blown-out tire on my citybike (which makes my mysterious cuts and bruises upon waking up yesterday less mysterious), and arrived at the location, but! all was not lost.
Using my skills of political sociology, I followed a hunch to the hipster-est bar in the city, and lo!--there was die Afterparty der Grünen, complete with balloons and the winning Landtagsabgeordneterin herself. As for taking advantage of the Mädels, well, I did flirt (for values of flirting that include trying to argue, auf deutsch, that the way to solve the EU's crises of democratic legitimacy is to use, wait for it, selection-by-random-lot) but I'm not sure how successful that was. Or rather: one of the guys in the conversation seemed quite interested, and invited me to Tuesday's Mitgliederversammlung, but that wasn't exactly the desired outcome. We'll see if the Mädel I was most interested in, who seemed to enjoy conversing, and also drinking, remembers me then.
Speaking as a relative of someone who's done comparable work for both charlatans and crazy people, get paid in advance (doing the work in paid-for chunks if necessary) and be willing to walk away fast.
and: I suppose one could see it as an über-dorky version of "pick-up artist" "negging" to challenge the democratic legitimacy & pragmatic efficacy of elections, at a post-election celebration of a radical party's historic victory, in conversation with a young lady working as an intern with the party on said election, but it honestly wasn't meant that way.
Nah, "negging" is a small subset of contrarianism, which everyone in our community I think enjoys to some extent.
122: Those professions are essentially closed to those from lower income backgrounds. If that isn't entrenching social class and, etc I don't know what is.
But again, what are those professions? I can only think of a couple, and those are very minimal parts of the economy, and by extension, the class structure. There are quite a few professions where people are expected to work initially for very little pay, and/or to put in significant unpaid time outside of work in order to advance, but that's not what the article in the OP is talking about, and that doesn't really fit any definition of "unpaid internship" that I'm aware of. Of the myriad ways in which class is reproduced, I think unpaid internships are always going to be one of the least important and most easily dispensed with.
109, 111, 115: Despite the fact that I'd considered writing a comment about WACKY START-UPS, which are destructive, in the used book selling world, I have no idea what you guys are talking about.
Wait. You hypothesize that the Fortune article is outlining a supposed employment trend that actually has little basis in reality?
Meanwhile, 102 is somewhat painful to read.
The biggest internship scandal going is that the Republicans pay their interns, thus allowing people from lower economic backgrounds to become right-wingers while the Democrats usually don't. The Democrats, therefore, get the fairly comfortable people who don't have to worry about pesky things like health insurance (a slight exaggeration, but only slight) and feel no burning desire to work on behalf of working people.
133 fits with my impression. There may also be another class filter via educational background (not that liberal groups should go out and recruit at Liberty and Oral Roberts).
(not that liberal groups should go out and recruit at Liberty and Oral Roberts)
We must create our own rigidly partisan, privately funded intern factories, Liberalty and Anal Roberts.
133: I hadn't heard about this. Is this a real thing or what? Link?
136: There was a link a while back about liberal/green fund raisers that paid, but poorly. Not exactly the same thing.
137: I await further information, then. It would be relevant to know whether the Republicans and Democrats in question are office-holders, or journalists, or public interest groups, or what.
It's obviously called Libertine University. Anal Roberts is, of course, correct.
138: You should probably await somebody other than me. I did start in Wikipedia about this, but quickly got lost on a tangent. Many clicks later, I learned that Greta Van Susteren saved Ana Marie Cox's (Wonkette) life on a train. I'm not going to top that as far as interesting, so I'm stopping.
140: Oh, no, I think I was awaiting further information from BG. Uh. Or anyone else who may have heard of this scandal. Maybe it's true, who knows, but one would want to have some independent verification of the matter.
I don't think there's any scandal in a literal sense. Republican activist groups and think tanks tend to pay or pay better (through regular wages, fellowships, etc) than left, liberal or centrist groups. But working for actual elected officials in Congress may be more or less under the same wage scale regardless of party. At least, these are my impressions. Aside from unpaid labor during and after college, the main routes into liberal stuff seem to go through grad school (law, policy, etc.), so you have to be able to afford that in some way.
This is speaking only of more-or-less mainstream national political work. Of course there are lots of other ways to get involved in political activism locally or outside of the major party context.
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Journalists. Buck just posted a story in one of the publications he writes for (UK tech publication with a vulture for the logo) cooing over his birthday iPad. The big goof.
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142: Gotcha. It hadn't occurred to me to think of that last as a scandal, but rather as a preference on the part of liberals for knowledgeable staff. To the extent that it's scandalous, it's a function of the high cost of education.
That said, a friend switched party affiliations a couple of years ago from Dem to Republican because the Republican party is where the money and organization is, and she thought she could do better (more effective, local) work from there. Nobody really knows what to say. It's a little shocking.
141: Wikipedia cites US News & World Report.
Yeah, I don't really care about the Greta Van Susteren story.
145.2: Plenty of people do that all the time. It's like moving to an area where everybody golfs. Even if you hate golf, you might try it out just for the social/employment/whatever aspects.
I mean, I don't even know who she is, though she has an impressive name.
149: I hate to be a prude, but I have trouble accepting it. So, apparently, do a lot of our mutual friends, who pretty much keep staring at her uncomprehendingly. She doesn't seem to have to changed her fundamental politics much; but then, the local politics mostly involve things like whether to press for installation of an additional turning lane at the intersection of this and that streets, whether to add another snow plow to the town's budget, and so on. One fears that she will be co-opted, however.
144: Now I'm trying to figure out if I should recognize the picture hanging over the bed.
I do get the feeling that the libertarian-right has a very well-developed ecology of institutions for supporting future political sorts, and the left is still playing catchup here. Based on my familiarity with the former, at least.
That said, the general problem of training is a much more complicated one that simply "wow, that woman is a moral cretin." Expecting individual profit-maximizing firms to invest resources into providing workers with transferable skills, without guarantees of making back the investment, presents pretty straightforward incentive problems. I've hyped it before, but Kathleen Thelen's book on this very subject is quite good--basically, the USA's 'low investment in training, low wage' equilibrium for non-professional workers was established quite early on, and it's not much of a surprise to see that spreading beyond the core sectors of industrial capitalism where it arose largely in response to perceived threats from organized labor and an inability to establish cooperative arrangements. From what I hear, even the world of Big Firm Law, which has a much easier time, structurally, handling the collective action problems involved, is feeling a lot of pressure on the current system, which involves paying elite grads 150k out of the gate, when they supposedly don't break even on that till they're 4th year associates. (And let's not even talk about the summer associates paid, what, 30k for 10 weeks?, and wooed with falconry.)
Libertine University
I bet there are a hundred schools out there which could adopt this name and not undergo an image change at all.
154: While it isn't true that all politics is local, much of it is. Things are becoming less local, that is to say political divisions are becoming more and more consistent with each other across geographic regions, but I wouldn't assume anything about your friend without more information.
Certainly, for the last two Pittsburgh mayoral elections, the Republican candidate was the more progressive by most measures. Also, neither of the Reps had a chance to win, so plenty of pissed off Democrats voted for them. Which isn't the same thing either, since most of these people are not deeply involved in politics.
Ahhhh, Space Ghost.
an inability to establish cooperative arrangements
I have somewhere, somehow gotten the impression that in Germany firms in the same general area of business jointly fund training for workers, so that the problem of one firm training someone who then goes off to work for another doesn't arise? Is this accurate?
And let's not even talk about the summer associates paid, what, 30k for 10 weeks?, and wooed with falconry.
You have to literally hit "Tucker Max" on the asshole scale to be fired from the gig too.
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Lap Giraffes. For the overlord who already has too many serfs.
(What I really love is the written yet Russian accented English on the site.)
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162: 146 has the link, because Minivet is more ambitious.
160: The story I heard at Schmebevoise and Schplimption was that a summer associate had once simply stopped showing up after about a week. They paid him for the whole summer, but did not extend an offer of employment for the next year.
Maybe he was simultaneously working a summer gig at a different firm, but for the first week.
164: Pretty much the exact opposite of the linked article in the post.
158: Okay, but I'll continue to grumble about it.
159.2 poses a question of interest! I read something-- where? -- some time in the last 6 months or so outlining the rather extraordinarily different arrangements in German industry/employment/labor. Different from those in the US, I mean. Cooperative boards, much more employee input. The (rather lengthy) article made the case that this was saving Germany's ass, so to speak, economically and ethically. It must have been in the NYRB or Harper's.
From the link in 161: Congratulations!!! You make 247,681 on waiting list for petite lap giraffe. Share greatest news with family on the facebook or tweeter.
I feel like I'll be waiting a while.
These days so many things move swiftly from satire to reality. Why, oh why, can't that happen with lap giraffes?
168: Interning is a good way to pass the time.
169: It could totally happen. Genetic engineering.
You can live in your parents' basement in the meanwhile.
If Gregor Mendel hadn't fucked around with peas, we could have already done it by selective breeding.
I have somewhere, somehow gotten the impression that in Germany firms in the same general area of business jointly fund training for workers, so that the problem of one firm training someone who then goes off to work for another doesn't arise? Is this accurate?
Sort of, yes; it's complicated. But yes, certification is both standardized and heavily subsidized, precisely in order to mitigate that issue. It's one of those areas where things are simply much more corporatist than the US, and the public/private distinction quite blurry. The book I linked above is, in fact, primarily concerned with the German case, tho she also looks at the US, Japan, and England. This looks like it might be a good short English overview of the system.
Since your German is better than mine, neB, you could also poke around the Publications website of the Ministry for Education and Research.
Oooh, or here: the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training. Looks like they have a lot of interesting comparative research, like this report here. But it's 5:15am, and I need my beauty sleep.
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I seem to be determined to take the Professional Engineering exam as an aptitude test, which is a shame. Not only is it designed as a knowledge test, of which I don't have enough, I also don't have the kind of mechanical aptitude that it would take to pass this test without practicing a whole lot. You'd think I'd do some goddamn practice problems.
The good news is that my tupperware drawer is newly organized and I re-potted all my pot-bound plants.
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I guess the Sophie giraffe doesn't count.
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For the record, I'm working on calculating member stiffness, K.
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The good news is that my tupperware drawer is newly organized and I re-potted all my pot-bound plants.
The plants had originally been potted in the tupperware drawer.
At least you have a tupperware drawer, Megan. Have you ever met someone who has no tupperware (or other non-name brand plastic containers with lids)? It's just weird, I'm telling you.
178: Whenever you start to work on it, the member gets stiffer?
180: My house eats tupperware. There's no other explanation as to why it keeps disappearing.
It occurred to me that 180 might have sounded like an "oh, first world problem" sort of remark, dismissive.
But no, it's simply that people (in the first world, I guess) who have no tupperware run kitchens I have trouble working with. What do you do with leftovers?
164: Oh, Schmebevoise. Although one had not heard that story before, it represents the firm pretty fairly.
183: Yeah, there's that. It's your roommates. And mine. Dunno what they're doing with it. It's best not to ask.
What do you do with leftovers?
I guess Saran Wrap/aluminum foil and bowls.
I have to buy tupperware (or other non-name brand plastic containers with lids) almost every time I'm visiting a place for a few weeks and they put me up in an apartment with a "fully-stocked kitchen". It's annoying.
135: Anal Roberts
Actually, I don't think "Roberts" is a good name for an SUV.
Also, no one ever wooed me with falconry. I feel cheated.
Somebody forgot to poke air holes in the tupperware. The falcon asphyxiated.
essear clearly has to start traveling with a backup stock of tupperware in his luggage. I wouldn't think that was odd.
Yeah, I just never think about it. Other things that are annoying to buy when only using a kitchen for a couple of weeks: spices, aluminum foil, olive oil, garbage bags. Most of those wouldn't be crazy to travel with. Olive oil is problematic.
194: Sounds like camping. Maybe you should just have a stock you bring with you each time. A couple of garbage bags, etc. etc. in small quantities. It wouldn't take up much room to just have that stashed in a small container (tupperware even) to take with you each time.
Bring a baggie of oregano past TSA doesn't sound like it is worth the risk.
You're so spoiled, essear. Some can make a meal with nothing but an egg, a cup, and a microwave.
196: TSA really didn't like it when my band went through security with a metronome, a bunch of extra nine-volt batteries, and a piece of plywood with several wired-up guitar pedals attached. We hadn't really thought about how sketchy that would look to someone unaccustomed to seeing music gear.
196: Hogwash! TSA doesn't care about your oregano, or even your cumin and tin foil.
Re whichever comment on the German state elections. I know that the German press is describing it as a debacle for the CDU, but I don't really see it. They dropped from 44% to 39% in Baden Wurttenberg and went up from 33% to 35% in Rheinland-Pfalz. Not good given that B-W, the much bigger of the two, is traditionally such a stronghold and they're shut out of power in both, but not horrific. It's FDP that really got hammered. And of course the SPD which people seem to be missing. Folks: just because they're coming into government in B-W (as junior partners to the Greens!) doesn't mean dropping by two points in B-W and ten points in R-P constitutes a decent result. My general happiness at the right losing is somewhat tempered by the fact that in B-W I actually favour the right on the two key issues of the campaign in B-W (upgrading rail service in the face of NIMBY opposition in Stuttgart and shutting down the nuclear industry).
Btw, anybody know how one orders the new NYT online subscription service? You would think that the site would make it obvious, but the only thing I can find on both the homepage and the member page is home delivery options.
196 I've told the story of how I was caught with a little baggie of white powder going into Quebec back in college, haven't I?
You've probably told it to someone at some point.
Fucking Assembly Dems cave to Cuomo and the Repubs on a budget deal that slashes funding for schools and Medicaid but manages to cut taxes for the suffering minority of folks who earn over a million a year. Yeah, the state budget probably needed some cuts, but it could have been much less and less directed to the poorest NYers.
Once, I took a flight and my luggage was lost. When they finally delivered it to me the next night, my suitcase had an overwhelmingly powerful garlic smell. So much so that I had to throw it out. Someone must have been traveling with massive amounts of garlicky liquid in a container that spilled, or something.
199: A friend's dad who played in a country-western band in Tokyo (srsly) told me that their Maori bassist had to play for Narita airport security more than once to prove that he and his equipment were what he said they were. This was well before post-9/11 security hysteria (but after the McCartney pot bust), so it likely had more to do with xenophobia than terrorism (don't tell bob).
I'm going to have a harder time convincing people that the new vanguard of social safety-net demolition is a Republican conspiracy, which it is, now that New York's governor has joined the PA-WI-OH-MI-FL-ME axis of misery.
[Can you demolish a net?]
Shred?
Way back in the dawns of time I was traveling with a bunch of fellow college students for a Spring Break excursion to Quebec, near Quebec City at the time of their carnival. The car was a wreck, but the owner who didn't know me well took a look at my appearance (long hair, tie-dye head band) and worried that I must be carrying weed with me and would get his prized possession confiscated. I tried to reassure him, but it turned out the Customs official who checked our vehicle in the freezing night had the same thought. She was less trusting and insisted on carefully going through my stuff while repeatedly asking me if I was 'really sure' I wasn't carrying illegal substances. On going through my bathroom stuff bag she found a little bit of white powder wrapped in plastic wrap. She looked triumphant as she asked me what it was and gestured her colleagues to her; the driver looked sick. I was stumped, but pretty sure it wasn't coke since I'd never even done the stuff at that point. I finally remembered that eighteen months earlier as I'd been leaving for freshman year in college my mom had packed that bag, and included some aspirin. I told her what it probably was. With derision she called out 'He says it's aspirin', opened it up, dipped her finger in and had a taste. One of her colleagues finally broke the silence and asked her what it was. 'Fucking aspirin' was the answer. I didn't find five dollars but in spite of nasty frost bite I did have a great time in Quebec.
'He says it's aspirin', opened it up, dipped her finger in and had a taste.
Jesus christ. Cocaine test swabs are like a buck apiece. Probably a worthy investment as God only knows what orifice that stuff might have been concealed in or what was used when it was cut.
Cocaine test swabs are like a buck apiece.
You know what really surprised me today? Shaoxing wine is like $2/750ml.
212: it was my general impression that cops, like everyone else, kind of enjoyed the numbing sensation of coke on your gums/bitter wonderfulness of heroin. (I had a friend we used to call "sweet taste" for this reason.) certainly that's how it always was in miami vice. (Crockett stabs a knife into one of the 20 5-kilo bundles in the back of the van, puts his finger in, brings it to his mouth, winces, and pronounces "it's clean stuff.")
Cocaine test swabs are like a buck apiece
But having an excuse for cocaine in your bloodstream when you're a customs officer? Priceless.
dsquared swoops in for the win!
one does see cops shaking people down for drugs at times in a way that seems to indicate more than academic interest.
interestingly, crockett never seemed to say things like "cut with italian baby laxative" or "they stepped on this shit so hard it's barely worth snorting." but that's because he and tubbs are only working on the serious, I need a maerati to complete this deal cases.
A good friend of mine recently started up a startup. Noticing their web site alluding to the fact they were "still developing the team", I enquired if there might be a job going. I've got an intern and I think I might hire them in six months' time.
I refrained from saying that it was indeed easier to start a business if you have slaves. PS, the article ought to have been titled "Why Can't I Own Canadians?"
145: There was a whole Matt Taibbi piece about the conservative infrastructure 4 or 5 years ago. There are lots of programs which will pay for conservatives to go do work in DC for the summer, but there's nothing comparable for lower-income kids. During the school year, there's less time for those kids to become involved in progressive/dem stuff, because there isn't paid employment, and they need to pay for college. Too many bright people go to high-paying jobs, because they're burdened with debt etc.
I don't want to give up on objective analysis, although I'm not sure that economic analysis is ever completely objective and will always be value laden. Mostly this has to do with how much people balance inflation against job growth.
In addition to the financial support, there's nurturing and mentoring for the right-wing.
The law school advisor in my House in college took a summer associate job so that she would not have to take out so much debt and could live with her family in NY, but she didn't want to work for them.
I don't know whether she got co-opted. She also managed to get a sweet Federal clerkship despite not doing the things that you're normally supposed to--no law review, etc.
And she never really interviewed for it. The day of her interview there was a bad snowstorm and the judge wanted to go home, so he called her and said, "You seem like a smart person and you sound nice enough, do you want the job?"
217: It was a Ferrari! Two, actually: first, a Daytona Spider (black), then a Testarossa (white).
My love for the works of Michael Mann could not be more pure, unless he were Terence Malick.
224: And, also, if busting G. Gordon Liddy for arms dealing in Central America requires a Ferrari or two, well, the more power to you.
208
I'm going to have a harder time convincing people that the new vanguard of social safety-net demolition is a Republican conspiracy, which it is, now that New York's governor has joined the PA-WI-OH-MI-FL-ME axis of misery.
NYT editorial on NYC employee pensions.
205
... but manages to cut taxes for the suffering minority of folks who earn over a million a year ...
Actually $200000/year I believe.
Shit, I'd never be a teacher in New York if I had to wait 10 years before vesting on nay pension at all.
"displaying their "greater sense of entitlement."
Any push for equality is going to look like that from the perspective of the people who've been having it good. 'Sense of entitlement' always needs context. A disabled person can have a sense of entitlement wrt use of a disabled parking space, for instance."
The thing about these costs for entering/ initiation and hazing years/ is there existence for proving to those who have jobs that they really deserve them, and earn their paycheck, not just holding the plum position on top of previous generations' accumulation of knowlege.
the article ought to have been titled "Why Can't I Own Canadians?"
Actually, the company is partly based in Toronto, so they may be taking advantage of the fact that Canadians are allowed to own USians.
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gswift, can you shoot me an e-mail when you get a chance?
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She can't comment very much; she's in jail in Utah.
Only 10 years before vesting? Compared to, say, my SO's situation, that's downright generous (23 years before vesting).
236: That's totally absurd, but I think that there might be less job mobility in her field. A Teacher might move to another district.
Your SO's agency's policy of giving no vacation in the beginning also sucks.
My company gives no vacation for 6 months, 2 weeks after a year and then another week at 18 months. They know that the burn-out rate is high and the average length of tenure is 6-9 months, so they don't want to give us too much vacation that we could cash out.
Maybe if they gave more vacation, people wouldn't burn out so quickly.
A friend's dad who played in a country-western band in Tokyo (srsly) told me that their Maori bassist had to play for Narita airport security more than once to prove that he and his equipment were what he said they were.
Laurie Anderson tells a similar story.
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A Huge Win for the Tea Party Ezra Klein...and we will watch some of the most vulnerable suffer and die.
Still laughing? Still think the Tea Party is crazy and silly and funny and just so fucking stupid? Let's mock them some more, mockery after all is our best weapon. They aren't smart like us.
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gswift, can you shoot me an e-mail when you get a chance?
Sent.
A Teacher might move to another district.
Yeah, state run system is much nicer that way. Pretty much every school district and police agency in this state just opt into the state system so moving around in state isn't a big deal.
mockery after all is our bestonly weapon.
Still laughing? Still think the Tea Party is crazy and silly and funny and just so fucking stupid? Let's mock them some more, mockery after all is our best weapon. They aren't smart like us.
What are you talking about? The "Tea Party" is people who do what Republican leaders tell them to do. What they want is to massively increase unemployment and deprive working people of all hope? No, that's what Limbaugh, McConnell and Boehner want. What the Tea Party members want is to outlaw abortion and impeach the Kenyan usurper.
243: Bob, who do you believe you are you talking to? You're the one who has advocated forming alliances with the Tea Party and suggested that we have more in common with them than with the Powers That Be, while the rest of us were saying that they were just the Republican Party with a new branding strategy and that compromising with them on anything was a sucker's game.
248: Lies! bob is against all compromise! He just thinks that if we start blowing stuff up, some of the Tea Partiers might be into it too.
Yes, really, Bob. What Apo said. I never laughed at the Tea Party, though I do think they're stupid and worthy of mockery. The Republican Party seems to be at odds with itself (in this view I apparently differ from Apo), and I don't find that amusing. Boehner is a feeble House Speaker for his party, it would seem.
The Republican Party seems to be at odds with itself (in this view I apparently differ from Apo)
I don't think we really differ so much. There has long been a power struggle between the old moneyed end of the GOP and the Bible-thumping, Stars-and-Bars-waving rubes that they pander to. The balance of power within the party has shifted somewhat toward the lunatic fringe, and the traditional power brokers are trying to figure out how to harness that wave instead of getting swamped by it. Certainly there's a battle going on for control of the party, but it's the same sides that have always been at battle.
I suspect the traditional powers are looking at the current clown show of presidential candidates and beginning to panic at the prospect of negative coattails. Any bets on how long before they start courting retired generals to enter the race as unity candidates?
the current clown show of presidential candidates
The Washington Post has been increasingly treating Michele Bachmann as a serious candidate for president, which has me alternately amused and terrified.
251: I agree. As for the panoply of somewhat embarrassing and dubiously electable presidential hopefuls, the GOP has already successfully sidelined Palin, as predicted; I'm waiting for them to make questioning remarks about Bachmann and Gingrich and -- hopefully -- Haley Barbour. I thought Mike Huckabee had already more or less decided not to run.
It's really Romney and Pawlenty (whose campaign videos are totally AWESOME), maybe Jon Huntsman, quite possibly Barbour.
It's not clear to me why people, according to the link to the TPM piece, don't like Romney. Not enough of a guy, maybe. He's declined to appear at a number of conservative-values type gatherings lately, which I thought was interesting.
Yeah, maybe a retired general would do the trick. Everybody loves those.
If Governor Leghorn is being touted as a serious candidate, the GOP is in dire straits for 2012. People don't like Romney because people can sense that he's a Ken doll with no real political convictions aside from "I should be president". And a Mormon. While the evangelicals don't mind living next to one, they sure don't want their daughter marrying one.
254: Plus "Obamacare = Romneycare" is credible strike against him with the party faithful.
Um. Really? I dream of Republican debates featuring Crazy Eyes Bachman, the winking Mama Barracuda Grizzly, and Governor Foghorn Leghorn. I dream of this.
And I think their issue with Romney is that he seems like he's from the Uncanny Valley.
Yeah, Barbour really is supposedly being touted as a possible serious candidate. He's making all the rounds, setting out his overall approach (he's the "anti-Obama"), targeting his core constituency, at least in terms of the primaries (it's the good old boy network!), and talking about how he sure hopes his accent doesn't put anyone off.
Supposedly he's a master politician, and has some significant campaign advisers already. And he has that homey touch, unlike Romney.
Weird, I know.
Romney's sort of the perfect Rockefeller Republican 35 years too late. (Although the Mormon thing may well have been a bigger barrier 35 years ago.)
I never believed that Palin was serious about running for president. Even a half-assed governorship was more than she could handle and she's already got the job she wanted: seeing herself on television. Bachmann, on the other hand, god please let her be the nominee. Huntsman isn't just a Mormon, but a Mormon who served in the Kenyan Marxist administration. I mean, *somebody* has to win it, and given the GOP winner-take-all rules, that could very well be someone that leaves the base cold but cobbles together enough 30% victories to knock out a fractured field. Like Romney.
Man. Who was the last presidential candidate who was both old and Southern? LBJ?
It's most likely all kabuki and Obama will win in a landslide, with just enough nail-biting to give Obama an excuse for losing another house of Congress and veering even more to the right; and close enough for his supporters to view that as some kind of victory.
Or Obama could screw the world up enough, intentionally or thru incompetence, to elect zombie Adolf Hitler. It can happen. It has happened. Voters just get pissed off and crazy.
I suspect 2012 is one the Republicans will happily lose, what with the further immiseration in the subsequent years and all. If Obama is willing to implement warmed-over reaganomics while the economy shits itself on his watch, why mess with a good thing?
Surely Pawlenty is the most likely of the current GOP names being tossed around, no? Remember when Republicans were talking about amending the constitution so that Schwarzenegger could run? Oh ho ho.
It is absolutely ludicrous how long it seems to have taken people to realize that the Tea Party was always just another name for the Republican base. People are easily moved by branding.
I still don't have a very good understanding of what's going on with the Republican party in the Upper Midwest. It seems like what we've had is the crazification of the local GOP in line with the rest of the country, combined with a folk memory of a non-crazy GOP that kept people voting for them. In that respect, what's going on in Wisconsin and, seemingly, in Ohio and elsewhere w/r/t poll numbers is somewhat hopeful.
Well, we're basically Californianizing, right? Republicans keep 40-plus in the Senate and win by losing.
266: Right, 50 laboratories of democracy until we find one that doesn't work and adopt that.
someone that leaves the base cold but cobbles together enough 30% victories to knock out a fractured field. Like Romney.
Right -- that's why I can't manage to dismiss Romney. The Republican primaries are going to be a trip, in any event. There will be some states that can't overlook the Obamacare=Romneycare thing, some that can, and so on. Without a clear and strong frontrunner going into (and coming out of) the primaries, the party is kind of screwed for the general.
I think people find Pawlenty creepy. More creepy than Romney.
The most important thing is if Romney, Pawlenty, or Huckabee is nominated, both major-party candidates will have surnames ending in vowels, for the first time in history. Exhilarating!
270: Speaking of vowel movements, T-Paw has a lock on the crucial dog-poop-humor vote :
Cable news stations already were reporting Palin as McCain's pick before the senator gave Pawlenty a courtesy call that morning. After he hung up, Pawlenty writes, he decided to take his dog for a walk.
"As I put the little bag over my hand and bent down to pick up her poop, I thought to myself, well, this is the only number two I'll be picking up today," Pawlenty writes.
239: Rockefeller Republicans were a lot more liberal than Romney is, especially on civil rights.
264 is depressingly, depressingly true.
264 is both very true and very false.
I'm pretty sure there will be many Republicans that will be amazed, aghast and horrified if Obama wins another term. In fact, I suspect a fair number will react the way some liberals did in 2004, thinking that there just has to be some kind of foul play to account for such a preposterous result.
[I just came from a budget meeting where bullet points for cost savings ideas were flashed rapidly on a screen. Savings method hidden in the blur: use more interns.]
President Washington didn't call them "interns".
I'd like to see a longitudinal study on how much of their lives people can remain super-engaged in politics.
Hold on here:
Republicans are suggesting they don't want mandatory cuts in the mix at all. The source briefed on the negotiations would not discuss the precise breakdown of the package Democrats are prepared to offer, but said the White House position consists largely of discretionary spending cuts, with some non-Medicare, non-Medicaid mandatory spending cuts thrown in to reach the $32 billion figure.
So, yeah, yeah, GOP only cares about cuts to poor-people programs, but what the fuck non-health-care mandatory spending are the Democrats proposing to cut? Social Security?
Maybe defense spending?
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.
Yes, it is to laugh. (Defense spending isn't mandatory, incidentally - we just treat it like it was.)
278: Yeah, I had no idea what to make of that at all. Maybe I haven't been reading widely enough lately, but this was the first I'd heard of that.
OT: Anyone here likes fishing? These fishers talk about heavy v. soft water, and I'm pretty sure they don't mean water with deuterium vs water without much calcium. I'm thinking they mean rapid vs. calm water, could that be right
I assume you're fly fishing; heavy water in that context just means "the river is heavy" i.e., there's a lot of water flowing down it, so big rapids, etc.
I read on the budget deal Klein, Beutler, Stein, somebody at FDL, others...shut the fucker down. Part of the goal, if the can't get Obama to concede everything, is it force Obama to shift funds around during a shut-down, providing grounds for impeachment. Terrific.
It is not really about the cuts but about what is cut. Rethugs want services that people see and feel to be cut, so that they understand more clearly that Obama and the Democrats don't give a flying fuck about the people. When the general attitude of "You're on your own, baby." gets widespread, they go for entitlements.
Oh, 30-50 million? 110+ million in Tomahawks on Libya.
This by Susan Lindauer (remember her?) was the most interesting thing I've read today, partly because of my own bristling pushback against it. "This can't be true" I know most liberals wouldn't get past the title or author. Fact check it? Anybody unreceptive would always resist.
For myself, I know in my gut that war planning started months before the democratization movement kicked off throughout the Arab world--a lucky cover for U.S. and European oil policy. Perhaps too lucky.
As Chossudovsky writes, "Hundreds of US, British and French military advisers arrived in Cyrenaica, Libya's eastern breakaway province" on February 23 and 24-- seven (7) days after the start of Gadhaffi's domestic rebellion. "The advisers, including intelligence officers, were dropped from warships and missile boats at the coastal towns of Benghazi and Tobruk." (DEBKAfile, US military advisers in Cyrenaica, Feb. 25, 2011) Special forces on the ground in Eastern Libya provided covert support to the rebels." Eight British Special Forces commandos were arrested in the Benghazi region, while acting as military advisers to opposition forces, according to the Times of London.
Susan Lindauer was declared psychotic by two of George W Bush's Federal Judges. Pretty fucking slick. Obama just got her released (Jan 16, 2009!) and charges dropped, apparently without comment.
260: A Huckabee/Bachmann ticket would be so ideal. I doubt it would happen, but it would be so amusing on so many levels.
Oh, 30-50 million? 110+ million in Tomahawks on Libya.
Billion, million, it's all so dreadfully confusing.
I do like it that Huckabee advocates a no or low-carb diet. If he gets behind the Halford strategic bison reserve plan, he has my vote.
288:I would laugh my ass off when it won.
I watched Nixon and Reagan win, and this country is much more profoundly pathological now.
Huckabee advocates a no or low-carb diet
So instead of throwing red meat to the conservative faithful, Huckabee was tucking into a breakfast of eggs and butter-slathered pancakes at a trendy New York hotel overlooking Times Square. His much discussed diet—he famously lost more than 100 pounds after being diagnosed with diabetes in 2003 and wrote a book about eating right—is apparently on hiatus.
So, right now, in this country, the most powerful empire the world has ever known, we have:
1. A failure of the traditions and institutions of civil society.
2. A ruling class that is ever more distant and estranged from the broad mass of people.
3. Military engagements that are prolonged, unwinnable and unpopular.
4. Severe austerity measures that threaten to impoverish many people who were formerly economically secure.
5. A moderate left which is rapidly losing both power and authority.
6. A moderate right which is rapidly throwing in with movements of the far right.
It certainly seems to me like a revolution, if not right around the corner, is not quite so absurd a possibility as it would have been even 10 years ago.
Obama just got her released
Read your own goddamn link, bob. And while you're at it, ask yourself who was president on Jan. 16, 2009.
this country is much more profoundly pathological now
Hahahahahaha
293: I can't really wrap my head around this, Natilo. I don't pooh-pooh the idea, but: what form would this revolution take? Armed? Or (just) general strikes? We -- or some group of people -- would forcibly throw the bums out of office? By ... having sit-ins in their offices and buildings and somehow barring them from entry? How would we then re-fill those offices so that the business of governance could proceed apace? Or would we (or whoever) not want a government (in its current form) any more? I don't get it.
This may be a function of either my lack of imagination or the extent to which I find bypassing the rule of law unthinkable. I myself don't really have a problem with the form of our government, though god knows it needs tweaking (filibuster reform, campaign finance reform, maybe do something about the electoral college, significant changes in financial laws, including corporate tax reform), but in theory, anyway, those things can be done with our current form of government. What would we be revolting against?
Or maybe you just mean something along the lines of recent protests in Wisconsin, Ohio, et al., but larger scale, and backed up by the kind of recall efforts and legal challenges we're seeing in WI.
And the alphabet all the way to letter G!
I'm not getting a left/moderate/sane revolution out of 293; I'm getting a right/authoritarian revolution wrapped in the forms of representative government.
Or, perhaps, actually representative of a majority of voters.
I'm getting a right/authoritarian revolution
Yeah, this. My pessimism: let me show you it.
Revolution sounds so exciting. I'm getting slide into banana republic.
299,300:Duh
Richard Estes sub-proletarianization;failure of unions (GE); Marx =>Frantz Fanon on lumpenproletariat;Self-Employed Women's Association in India
For Fanon's warning may still be apt: if it is not organized by the insurrection, it will join the colonialist troops as mercenaries. In the context of the developed world, his remark can be posthumously construed as pointing towards the failure of the left to organize increasing numbers of temporary and informal workers, leaving them susceptible to appeals from the right, particularly racist and xenophobic ones.
Might be interesting to look at late capitalism and financialisation in OECD countries as needing a (sub-proletarianization) re-colonization for lack of another helpful word, of major portions of its workforce and social structure.
What's "it" in the first sentence of that quote?
||
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12889541
>
303:This is Estes riffing off Fanon, link in 302
Of course, the problem in the US, Europe and much of East Asia is that the lumpenproletariat, for lack of a better word, isn't large enough or desperate enough yet to present the prospect of violent, revolutionary action described by Fanon, although, interestingly enough, it has been a prominent feature of the revolutionary movements throughout North Africa and the Middle East, which is why it has the potential to spread to other parts of the world with similar social conditions. Furthermore, this vaguely defined lumpen group is not of peasant origin, but the refuse of deindustrialization and the decline of the collective solidarity among semi-skilled workers. Fanon describes a lumpen class of dispossessed peasants in the lesser developed world created by capitalist industrial development, whereas some G-20 countries like the US, the UK and much of Europe, with the exception of Germany, are arguably creating a lumpen group as a consequence of the radical financialization and marketization of their societies. Hence, the question of how to politically reach these people by means of a social doctrine that doesn't rely upon the dystopian disintegration of society.For Fanon's warning may still be apt: if it is not organized...etc
Interns
Thanks, bob.
"Hence, the question of how to politically reach these people by means of a social doctrine that doesn't rely upon the dystopian disintegration of society. "
"There must be blood, and it must be innocent/or the wall will not stand."
Which latter I don't believe, and don't understand the wide appeal of.
Rise up workers! Smash your chains!
Don't stop fighting till they blow up your brains!
Nothing can clean me but a blood bath!
304:FDL
thanks powwow! from your link: Result of Pu measurement in the soil in Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant
Units are: Bq/kg・dry soil
1．Result of the measurement
Pu-238
① site field 13:30, March 21st -- (5.4±0.62)×10-1
②１km away from Unit 1/2 exhaust stack 7:00, March 22nd -- N.D.
③ 0.75km away from Unit 1/2 exhaust stack 7:10, March 22nd -- N.D.
④ 0.5km away from Unit 1/2 exhaust stack 7:18, March 22nd -- N.D.
⑤ solid waste storage 7:45, March 22nd -- (1.8±0.33)×10-1
ordinary domestic soil (MEXT environmental radiation database; 1978-2008) -- N.D.～1.5×10-1
Pu-239,Pu-240
① site field 13:30, March 21st -- (2.7±0.42)×10-1
②１km away from Unit 1/2 exhaust stack 7:00, March 22nd -- (2.6±0.58)×10-1
③ 0.75km away from Unit 1/2 exhaust stack 7:10, March 22nd -- 1.2±0.12
④ 0.5km away from Unit 1/2 exhaust stack 7:18, March 22nd -- 1.2±0.11
⑤ solid waste storage 7:45, March 22nd -- (1.9±0.34)×10-1
ordinary domestic soil (MEXT environmental radiation database; 1978-2008) -- N.D.～4.5
２．Analysis
Density of detected Pu-238, Pu-239 and Pu-240 are within the same level of the fallout observed in Japan after the atmospheric nuclear test in the past. Activity ratio of Pu-238 detected in site field and solid waste storage against Pu-239 and Pu-240 are 2.0 and 0.94 respectively. They exceed activity ratio of 0.026 which resulted from the atmospheric nuclear test in the past, thus those Pus are considered to come from the recent incident
OTOH, Wikipedia says Pu is not toxic!!!
Several populations of people who have been exposed to plutonium dust (e.g. people living down-wind of Nevada test sites, Hiroshima survivors, nuclear facility workers, and "terminally ill" patients injected with Pu in 1945-46 to study Pu metabolism) have been carefully followed and analyzed.These studies generally do not show especially high plutonium toxicity or plutonium-induced cancer results.[88] "There were about 25 workers from Los Alamos National Laboratory who inhaled a considerable amount of plutonium dust during the 1940's; according to the hot-particle theory, each of them has a 99.5% chance of being dead from lung cancer by now, but there has not been a single lung cancer among them."[94][95]
Sprinkle it on me breakfast cereal
Japanese Radiation found in Concord NH!
"In New Hampshire we do not typically test rain or snow samples during the winter season," said Dr. José Montero, DPHS Director. "However, we felt it was prudent to take the initiative and do some expanded testing. This is not an unexpected finding and we may continue to see similar activity until the crisis in Japan stabilizes."
Where the American Revolution began! /bachmann
310: Every hour wounds, the last one kills.
299: I'm not getting a left/moderate/sane revolution out of 293; I'm getting a right/authoritarian revolution wrapped in the forms of representative government.
The way I see it, comrade, there are two classes...
No, just kidding.
The thing is, I'm hardly a theorist of revolutions, but I have read about quite a few of them, and it seems to me that it's pretty tough to predict, in a pre-revolutionary period, precisely what form a revolution is going to take, and what the outcome of that revolution will be.
Right now, we have a situation that, as I wrote above, seems like it's trending toward being pre-revolutionary. Again, I wouldn't necessarily bet everything that it is pre-revolutionary, but there seem to be some strong indicators pointing that way. But leaving aside that question entirely, what if we assumed that we were in a pre-revolutionary period, and we wondered what a contemporary American Revolution would look like, and what it would lead to?
First, in terms of what the revolution would look like, we're dealing a more-unique-than-usual situation, in that we're talking about a gigantic empire, with a huge military, many decentralized political/economic power clusters, extraordinarily well-developed security apparatuses, an unusually large number of factions, and a heavily armed civilian population. So it's unlikely that this revolution would look very much like the several most recent revolutions, where you've got 3-4 big factions, some of whom can collaborate closely, and you storm the presidential palace and quicker than you can say "Jack Robinson", you have a new government.
No, what we'd probably see, in my view, is a plethora of mini-revolutions, on the municipal, state and regional levels, with something concurrent, but not necessarily contiguous happening at the national level. Consider what's been happening in Madison, where discontented elements have been flocking from all over because it looks like this is the best shot anyone has to effect some positive change, and hold back the tide of negative change, right now. This is a pretty mobile society. People could very easily sort themselves geographically by affinity if there seemed to be some hope there. E.g. hardcore environmentalists flocking to Ecotopia for a green uprising, gun nuts to So. Dakota, municipalists to Minneapolis or Burlington, Mormons to Utah, etc. So the look and feel of the revolution could be completely different from anything we've ever seen before.
The second question then, is what does post-revolutionary society look like, and how much of that is based on the specific form the revolution takes? Obviously, if things shake out like they did during the October Revolution, that's a Bad Thing. But the Bolshevik hijacking of the Revolution was hardly cast in stone. It was a multi-year process, and there were plenty of times (Kronstadt, the Civil War, the death of Lenin) when it could have gone a number of different ways. So we can't necessarily look at what happens around the flashpoint of a revolution, in regards to violence, or the main actors, or the initial decrees, and say "this is how the rest of the revolutionary process unfolds." Who would have imagined in the early 1930s, that before the decade was out, there'd be a revolution and civil war in Spain, and that it would feature prominent anarchists joining the government? So there's a lot of ways that everything from completely external forces to bizarre accidents of history are going to influence the development of a revolution. Shit, if Wat Tyler and his comrades had just been a tiny bit more cynical, things could have been MUCH, MUCH different in Europe for a long time.
Of course, what I would like to see is a fairly bloodless revolution that learns from past examples and organizes around very decentralized, humanitarian, pluralistic principles. Abolishing the state, of course, is something that I'm always going to be for, but at this point I think it's clear that we really need to figure out some ways to organize ourselves that prevent both the state AND capital from reversing revolutionary gains. Industrial unionism/anarcho-syndicalism (to the extent that they're different) both have, in my view, some pretty useful things to say about that problem, in terms of allowing for the creation of powerful, continuous organizations that are still directly democratic and which tend not to centralize power. My fear, of course, is that the people who hold these visions won't have enough time or energy to share them before we find ourselves in a revolutionary situation.
My fear, of course, is that the people who hold these visions won't have enough time or energy to share them before we find ourselves in a revolutionary situation.
tl;dr
(Kidding! I'm very much in sympathy with what you wrote. But my point is that it's not just about time & energy w.r.t. vision-provisioning, if you will.)
Or rather: getting people to listen takes more than just time and energy.
Nat, not to be too negative, but my impression is that people with your political preferences have little to no political power or influence now. Why would that change under revolutionary conditions?
It was thoughtful of some commenters to help you with MovableType. Did you pay them minimum wage?
Coincidence of the day, my grandfather was named Walter S.
I'm thinking of the Louisiana State Penitentiary farm. Or do they get paid there?
Well, if you count moral social redemption for their crimes.
Also, didn't families used to pay to enter youngpeople into apprenticeships? Unpaid internships seem similar, probably with similarly high variance in the actual educational and future professional value. A small number are great launching points and most are crap exploitation.