Communitas

After our 62-14 romp over Wake today, we’re 6-2 & bowl eligible.

Have we beat a team with a winning record? Nope. But I’ll take it.

This election season there’s lots of discussion about the future of America and the American Dream. Two of the most insighful columunists I know—Fareed Zakaria and Thomas Friedman—recently wrote on the subject, and I was eager to hear what they had to say.

Zakaria well diagonses our biggest challenge: the disappearance of the American middle class. He starts with a telling antecdote:

Steven Rattner, who helped restructure the automobile industry, tells the story of getting a new General Motors plant online in Michigan by bringing management and unions together. “The unions agreed to allow 40% of the new plant to operate at $14-an-hour wages,” he says, “which is half of GM’s normal wages. The management agreed to invest in this new plant. But here’s the problem: workers at GM’s Mexican operations make $7 an hour, and today they are as productive as American workers. And think of this: $14 an hour translates into about $35,000 a year. That’s below the median family income. The whole experience left me frightened about the fate of the American worker.”  

And he then provides a broader analysis of the dynamic, identifying three job categories: management, service, and operations:

job growth divides neatly into three categories. On one side are managerial, professional and technical occupations, held by highly educated workers who are comfortable in the global economy. Jobs have been plentiful in this segment for the past three decades. On the other end are service occupations, those that involve “helping, caring for or assisting others,” such as security guard, cook and waiter. Most of these workers have no college education and get hourly wages that are on the low end of the scale. Jobs in this segment too have been growing robustly.

In between are the skilled manual workers and those in white collar operations like sales and office management. These jobs represent the beating heart of the middle class… . in the Great Recession, it has been these middle-class folks who have been hammered. Why? … technology, followed by global competition, has played the largest role in making less valuable the routine tasks that once epitomized middle-class work.

The core blue and white collar jobs of the middle class are disappearing through tech and globalization. And I think the most interesting part here is the characterization of these roles as performing “routine tasks.” A generation ago, you could work in a factory at GM, work hard doing largely routine tasks every day, and earn a very nice living. Doing routine work just doesn’t work any more.

Friedman expands upon this in his column. Friedman too recognizes the brutal realities of global competition, saying:

[the U.S. has] to create those [innovative, in-demand] products and services with a work force that is so well trained and productive that it can leverage modern technology so that one American can do the work of 20 Chinese and, therefore, get paid the same as 20 Chinese. There is no other way

He talks about such innovative products and services such as Google or iPhone apps. And indeed, those Americans who continue to be on the cutting-edge of innovation will do well.

But then he gets to the real problem and proposes a solution:

But not everyone can write iPhone apps. What about your nurse, barber or waiter? Here I think Lawrence Katz, the Harvard University labor economist, has it right. Everyone today, he says, needs to think of himself as an “artisan” … Everyone today has to be an artisan and bring something extra to their jobs… Sadly, average is over. We’re in the age of “extra,” and everyone has to figure out what extra they can add to their work to justify being paid more than a computer, a Chinese worker or a day laborer

Indeed he has the problem right: not everyone is going to be self-staring super innovator. Many folks are much more disposed to doing routine work. His solution? They should become an “artsian” that “figures out what extra they can add to their work to justify being paid more than a computer, a Chineses worker or a day laborer.” So essentially each worker needs to be super creative and—even in their middle class role—figure out some way they are going to differentiate themselves in their career development so that they can justify higher compensation.

Really, this is the plan?

Zakaria’s proposed solution isn’t any better. He talks about the need for education and training so that Americans can be more skilled and earn higher wages. He quotes the former CEO of IBM on how Americans we really need to work with computers. And if those Americans are still doing routine computer-based work, do we think that they’ll be 20X more productive than a trained Chinesse computer worker and thus should earn 20X more?

 
As I mentioned, I was eager starting in on these columns. Both writers identify the problem correctly: routine operational blue and white collar jobs—the heart of the middle class in this country—are being rapidly reduced by globablization and technology. And their proposed solution—make everyone an iniative-taking executive or innovative artisian—makes theoretical sense, in that these are the roles that add the most value and will be best compensated.

But how will that happen? Zakaria and Friedman urge education and training, and while those are important, I think they can only do so much. It gets to a question less of politics or economics and more to human nature. And I think it’s unrealistic to expect the majority of Americans to become risk-taking, innovating, artisans / executives. Most of us are much more inclined to do routine work (and there’s nothing wrong with that of course … but it’s going to get more and more difficult to be paid highly for it).

I’m eager to hear more solutions, but the more I consider this topic, the more convinced I am that America has a tough road ahead and that our living stanards are on a downward trend. We always think back to the 2nd half of the 20th century as our reference point for American prosperity. I don’t think we consider enough what an anomoly that period was: the rest of the industrialized world was literally rubble and ashes in the wake of WWII, while America was largely untouched. Was it a huge surprise then that America ruled the world economy? Of that those who did routine, middle-class work we able to enjoy such a high standard of living?

And now the rest of the industrialized world—plus new emerging powers—are back and fully functioning. And globalization and technology have made the economic marketplace more competitive than ever. Given all of this it is unreasonable to use the 2nd half of the 20th century as our expectation. Maybe instead we should prepare for something quite different.

Over a year ago I bought an early Android phone. The Android platform continued to advance and left my old HTC My Touch device in the dust. Android rolled ahead to 2.0, 2.1, 2.2 and I was stuck back at 1.7. 

The biggest pain for me was that only at 2.1 and above could the GMail app use more than just a GMail account. Thus I’d have to access my work account—which runs on Google Apps—via the browser. And running around the streets of New York and elsewhere emailing from a phone web browser—that sucks. 

This morning my phone told me that an Android update was available. What’s this? I thought. I installed and I’m up to 2.2 now. I have multiple accounts on GMail and there’s a bunch of Apps that were 2.0 or greater that I can now use. And now I can also use my phone to give web access to my laptop. 

For a frugal, techy person like me who hates to buy new stuff, this is a great little victory in life. :-)

Nice job Alex & Jason. Now we’re talking Boulder!

I think this is fantastic. 

See more here. 

My company Kapost just announced our funding round. It’s been a long slog and I’m very appreciative of my partners, TechStars, the various mentors that have helped, and our investors. I’m most appreciate of all of the help of my wife, who has supported me through all of the ups and downs of getting this company off of the ground. 

We have a long way to go, but it is great to have the resources in place to be able to shift both our business perspective from short-term survival to longer-term business building. And, let me tell you, this also has great benefits to my personal state of mind. :-)