Posted in economy, politics, technology, tagged $2 dollar a day, 2012, 47 percent, accusations, American Dream, American way, Arab Spring, Australia, backbiting, badmouth, candidate, character defect, cohesion, community, competitive, Comptroller, consumer price index, consumers, country, crisis, culprits, David Walker, debt, deficit, democracy, Democrats, dialog, direction, division, Dong Tao, easy target, economy, efficient, election, emerging power, entitlement class, Europe, family, finance, financial aid, First World, free trade, fundraiser, future, gina rinehart, have nots, haves, help, incomes, individualism, insolvency, jobs, labor, lazy, living standards, low pay, middle class, minimum wage, Mitt Romney, money, nation, partisans, policy, political will, president, profits, pundits, questions, race to the bottom, raise all boats, real inflation, recession, Reform, regulations, Republicans, resentment, scapegoat, solution, stand together, sustainable, technology, Third World, threaten, trade for a new century, unemployment, unsustainable, USA, voters, wage loss, Wall Street, welfare state, West, whining, work, workforce, world markets on September 20, 2012|
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She’s the world’s wealthiest woman you’ve never heard of and she’s saying something you probably wish you hadn’t: “Gina Rinehart, world’s richest woman, makes case for $2-a-day pay“,the Los Angeles Times reports.
The Australian mining heiress has a problem. The cost of running a mining operation in Australia cannot compete with Africans willing to work a continent away for $2 per day.
There’s a certain elementary logic to Rinehart’s argument. If the two nations are selling raw materials at vastly different prices because of vastly different costs of labor, her operation loses. In a worse-case scenario, it might not even make sense to go on operating. From Rinehart’s perspective, profit is the objective and benevolence is a job — never mind if the jobs she creates fails to compensate workers well enough to keep the lights on. She’s precariously positioned on that slippery slope so common to today’s political and trade debates: It could be worse: no jobs.
The world’s richest woman has a point. But it doesn’t pass the sustainable-future test.
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Posted in art, media, notes on the human condition, tagged acclaim, aesthetic, American Dream, angst, appeal, art appreciation, art history, art world, artist, artistic merit, barriers, beauty, Bible, biography, Christian, church, clash, collectors, commercial, community, conformity, consumer, contemporary, contradictions, contrast, controversy, conventional, creative, creator, critics, culture, curators, cynical, death, debate, definition of art, dialog, discussion, disenfranchise, distain, disturbed, elite, esoteric, eye of the beholder, family values, fans, favor, fine art, folk artists, gallery, globalism, idealized, ideals, innocence, landscapes, lithographs, marginalize, middle class, modern art, narcissism, painter of light, paintings, passing, personal life, popular, portray, postmodernism, prints, redefine, self-absorbed, styles, suppression, themes, Thomas Kinkade, traditional, unconventional, what is art on April 8, 2012|
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There is something attractive about defrocking a figure of faith-and-family-values virtue, particularly one of great commercial success who has endeared himself to an endangered minority: the American middle class. The late Thomas Kinkade, who died of unnamed causes Friday, made an easy target. The self-anointed “painter of light” specialized in idealized scenes harkening to a more innocent and bucolic time. Such art might be expected from a pastor’s wife or a bookish introvert yet it was the high degree of contrast between the artist’s placid and peaceable imagery and his real-world foibles and flaws that made him an irresistible subject for personal and artistic attack.
In the wake of Kinkade’s untimely death at age 54, the Los Angeles Times rehashed a 2006 exposé in which the painter was portrayed as a drunken, ruthless and foulmouthed hypocrite. Whatever one may believe about the man, the art world has stood firm about his vision: Kinkade is a commercial success but his paintings do not merit creative or historic memory.
Kinkade’s artistic legacy is as much in question as his personal one. (more…)
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Posted in economy, notes on the human condition, technology, tagged advantage, affluence, Americans, animals, Apple, auto industry, best practices, bottom line, brand-name, buying power, capitalists, CEOs, China, Chinese, Coach handbags, coffee, conscious consumerism, consumer, controversy, corporations, cost effective, cost savings, country of origin, deindustrialization, Dollar, duties, dysfunctional, economy, efficiency, electronics, exploitation, export, factory, fair trade, Forbes, Foxconn, free trade, globalism, goods, Green, Honda, human rights, import, industrial policy, investment, iPad, iPhone, labor, level the playing field, local, loss, made in America, manufacturer, mark-up, market, marketplace, markup, MBAs, middle class, myth, name-brand, New York Times, non-GMO, outsource, overseas, PC, perils of a service economy, policy, premium, price hikes, private enterprise, produce, products, profitability, profitable, protectionism, race to the bottom, rational self interest, reconceptualize, relocalization, renegotiate, responsibility, shame, shifts, shop, shrinking, slave, social contract, solutions, Southeast Asia, standards, Steve Jobs, store-brand, suicides, sustainable, sweatshop, symbiotic, target market, taxes, technology, Third World, Toyota, trade, underpaid, US, vanity pricing, wealth, workers, zoo on January 31, 2012|
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The secret is out: Apple has a worm inching its way through its corporate flesh. January was a tough month on the Cupertino, California company venerated for its innovation and vision.
The controversy emerged when an Apple contractor in China, a manufacturing facility known as Foxconn where many brand-name electronics are assembled largely by hand, made headlines when dozens of workers threatened to jump to their deaths over a labor dispute. Foxconn’s solution? Erect netting beneath roofs and windows.
It doesn’t end there. For 12-hour shifts, six-days-per week and a live-in lifestyle workers allegedly earn just $17, the New York Times reports. Forbes and PC Magazine added their own angle to the news. One such detail described a high-level manager who, at a Chinese zoo, asked a zookeeper to provide advice on how to deal with his workers, drawing a direct comparison between factory workers and undomesticated animals. It gets worse. A NYT piece, “In China, Human Costs are Built into iPad“, refers to two dozen accidental worker deaths that have occurred as a result of unsafe working conditions. Finally, in “This American Life” the narrator of “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory” recounts a first-hand meetup with underage Chinese workers, among scores of others who suffer permanent neurological tremors and ticks as a consequence of over-exposure to a chemical toxin.
For all the outrage, many argue such are the inescapable growing pains of a Third World labor force “coming up”. At one time, the United States, too, was known for worker exploitation, a chief reason child labor laws gained traction and unions became a bulwark against corrupt and abusive management practices. And yet, even at the height of the union movement in the US such organizations represented only a fraction of the workforce. Nonetheless, what began as labor negotiating with management to build a viable American middle class has transformed in recent decades to its polar opposite: a perception that unions destroy American prosperity.
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