Timesizing® Associates

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Good News, July 1-10, 2000
[Commentary] ©2000 Phil Hyde, The Timesizing Wire, Box 622, Cambridge MA 02140 USA (617) 623-8080

7/09-10/2000 weekend glimmers of hope -

1. 7/09   24/7 excess, by Susan Trausch, Boston Globe, G4.
   [A Globe columnist sounds the alarm -]
   OK people, let's turn off the cell phones....
   • "I can't," says public relations kahuna George Regan, calling from a golf course on the Cape. "It's an addiction...."
   • "I've been fighting it but so far have made no inroads...," \says\ Gloria Larson, partner at Foley, Hoag & Eliot....
   • "I'm the rule today, not the exception,"...says..\..Pat Moscaritolo, president and chief executive of the Greater Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau \as he\ takes his laptop and cell phone wherever he goes so he can check in with the office to find out what he's missing....
   Is this
   • efficiency or
   • an update of Dante?
   How much would the economy suffer if America blew the whistle on work the way the French do in August? What if we as a nation decided to bring back that unfettered "can't be reached until after Labor Day" vacation? "All the cardiologists would go broke," says David Porter, who runs Baystate Financial Services in Boston....
   [Good. Why should we be outdoing Japan in "karoshi" = death by overwork?]
   "The electronics drive this," he says. "People want instant access to things." Do we, really, or did progress simply drop on our heads?...
   "It's insecurity," says one businessman of his compulsion to stay connected. "It's nervousness."
   [And insecurity and nervousness are decidedly not cool. We have the ability to make every American secure and financially care-free - on a market-oriented and non-parasitizing basis. But we are assuming we would not feel alive - or important - if we were not on the verge of burnout, bouncing from crisis to crisis. Or maybe it's just that we want to keep ourselves from having time to realize how empty and "from poverty" our lives really are, as we neglect our families and neighbors and communities, and turn ourselves into mere extensions of our cellphones and beepers. We might as well repeal the Emancipation Proclamation. "Cursed is he who must always be doing."]
   We could all take a page from Paul Guzzi, president and CEO of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce..."I don't know if it's age or mellowing or just having confidence in other people, but I feel no need to stay in touch.... If there's an emergency, people know how to contact me. This is a very different attitude for me than in my past work lives."
   Th[at] man gets the Golden Inner Tube award. And he says he knows other executives who think the same way. Here's hoping they start a movement....
   [Well, there is an embryonic shorter hours movement in America. Check out our links under "worktime economics" and our bibliography for info. And subscribe to the shorter hours listserve on the Web - send an email to swt-digest-request@swt.org with 'subscribe' as the message.]

2. ["Good, but...is this the Dark Ages?"]
   7/09   Child-labor statute revision urged to protect teen workers - On-job injuries, neglected studies among concerns, by Diane Lewis, Boston Globe, G8.
   ...Over the last six years, the..\..Teens at Work: Surveillance and Prevention Project \of the\ state Dept. of Public Health...identified 3,389 work-related injuries among working youths in Massachusetts, just over 500 injuries per year. And Ellen J. Frank, director of the project, said youths probably suffer far more injuries than recorded by the state..\.. But in the eyes of some observers, such accidents are all the more worrisome in a state where child-labor laws are not stringent enough to protect young employees from working too many hours...
   [You mean there is such a concept as "too many hours" in America today?!]
   ...or from handling dangerous equipment that could lead to a maiming, or worse, a fatality. [So] now, legislators are pushing hard for what many are calling the first comprehensive revision of Massachusetts' child-labor statute in decades. The measure...would limit working hours for high school students to 28, down from a current high of 45 hours per week.... The bill would [also] impose an 11 pm curfew on all employees younger than 18. Right now, teenage workers employed by some industries can work until midnight, and there have been instances where some have worked even later. The bill is good news in a state where many 16- and 17-year-olds are in the work force.... 48% of all [of this age cohort] held jobs in Massachusetts during [1999], according to the state Dept. of Public Health's Teens at Work" Surveillance and Prevention Project..\.. By contrast..\..federal employment statistics for 1999 show that, nationally, [only] 31% of all people in that age bracket had jobs....
   [One American state struggles to pull itself out of the Dark Ages - 45 hours a week indeed! The 9-hour day went out in 1940, supposedly for all Americans.]

3. [qiki]
   9/10 It's time to make Social Security needs-based, letter to editor by Paul Linsay of Newton, Boston Globe, A14.
   ...Why should retirees sitting around their golf course condos be receiving Social Security?... No one should live in poverty after a lifetime of work, but only those who would otherwise live in poverty should get [Social Security and Medicare].

4. 7/10 The future of menial jobs, op ed by Alex Marshall, Boston Globe, A15.
   PARIS - ...Western Europe is probably far more advanced technologically than we [Americans] are on a day-to-day level, in part because its higher labor costs push employers to innovate more. Although France, Germany, and Sweden lag behind us in computer and Internet use, they are ahead of us in the mechanization of life in ways that weed out the more boring and simplistic jobs. Some Europeans say America appears almost Third Worldish because of the continuing presence of jobs whose skills consist mostly of standing around..\..
   
   • If you [want] to watch a movie after midnight here...you walk...to the nearest "Cinebank"...that similar to an ATM, dispenses movies instead of cash....
   • Steer your car into a French parking garage and you will never see a parking lot attendant. A machine handles it all....
   • Hand-held credit card processors are standard in many restaurants.
   • Some gas stations are automated.
   • The newest subway line in Paris has no operators.
   Why this greater prevalence ofd automation in Europe? Because, quite simply, people have better things to do than sit all day in a booth in a parking garage. Employer costs are much higher in most of Western Europe. Wages, health care contributions, pensions, family leave, and general taxes all add up. This pushes employers to automate, which in the long run makes economies more productive and efficient...
   [...only if they have a smooth way of sharing the vanishing work (like Timesizing), because...]
   These high labor costs also push up unemployment. But the relationship is not absolute. Germany had lower unemployment than the United States in much of the 1970s and '80s, even though it had far higher labor costs.
   In the United States, a healthy dose of social benefits, higher minimum wages, and other labor policies might actually improve our nation's competitiveness by pushing companies to modernize.
   [The only social benefit we need is a worksharing technology, meaning an enforced maximum workweek. Minimum wages have always backfired and should be abolished. An adequate and enforced maximum workweek engages market forces to raise wages and benefits on a timely and flexible basis that minimum wage laws, always high-maintenance (needing adjustment every few years) and too-little too-late, can never match. To get an adequate maximum workweek, Timesizing.com recommends determining the appropriate workweek level by the under-employment rate - as long as under-employment, including multiple low-wage part-timers, standard unemployment, welfare, disability, homelessness and prisons, is too high or rising, we adjust the maximum workweek gradually downward, so the natural market-demanded employment is slowly squeezed out onto more people - like icing onto a cake. Never do we resort to artificial government makework campaigns, and we need to gradually dismantle the ones we have as we implement Timesizing. Right now all the icing is clumped up in the middle. High-demand skills, employment, income and wealth are unbelievably concentrated. Reee-dic-u-lous.]
   Although we boast of an admirably low unemployment rate the Brazilification of our economy continues [our italics - ed.]. We may have entered a new gilded age where Internet millionaires [strain to] think of ways to spend their money while nameless hordes [stand around and] collect the parking fees for their BMWs.... We might pause in our orgy of self-congratulation and begin imitating Europe.... Europe will probably never achieve American-style, free-wheeling capitalism, and America will probably never achieve the equality and harmony of European social democracy. But a lean in the direction of the other by each might help each enormously.

5. 7/10 Rethinking our spending priorities, by T. J. Howard of Duxbury [MA], Boston Globe, A13.
   The June 25 editorial, "Wealthiest but not healthiest," speaks to the fact that the U.S. spends more per capita than any other nation on health care and yet ranks 37th in effective results.
   The same issue carried an op-ed column by Robert Kuttner ("The health care solution") advocating universal coverage and also pointing out the fact that taxpayers bear the brunt of the cost of drug research and development through subsidies to the drug manufacturers, who then reap the benefits by gouging the very taxpayers who are financing them.
   Meanwhile in "Clinton urges $58B drug plan" (page A8), instead of berating the manufacturers for their disgraceful practices, the president proposes a cap on drug costs for seniors of $4,000 a year.... Let's see you get that out of a Social Security check.
   Meanwhile, we are sending billions to foreign nations that many of us have never heard of and most of which don't know how to spell loyalty. We give this foreign aid out of our concern for the poorer nations' well-being. But what about our own citizens whose money is being spent?
   [Amen. What about the "third world in America" - the "Brazilification of our economy" mentioned by Alex Marshall in the item above? What about "charity begins at home"? What about some binding public referendums to stop our wealthy insulated "representatives" from wasting our money enriching foreign dictators? What about helping others, not by dependency-engendering handouts, but by modelling a better sharing technology?]
   A recent overnight hospital stay for a two-hour operation at a Boston hospital produced a bill of $12,012.25, followed by a surgeon's bill of $5,957, with separate charges for every pre-op and post-op visit. Why should a doctor's time be worth that much?
   [Because s/he suffers so much in training? Whose bad management is that?! Europeans train doctors within a 35-40 hour workweek and skip all our medicos' sado-masochistic histrionics. "Physicians, heal yourselves!"]
   How many fancy cars can one drive?
   Many of our leaders...never get to the real problems, mainly because they live in different worlds than the electorate.
   [The real old-fashioned element in our society - in the sense of outdated and obsolete - is our 60-year-old workweek. With a frozen workweek and inrushing robotization, we have marginalized ordinary employees, "trickling down" wealth to them while their technology-enhanced productivity triggers the "pouring up" of wealth to the wealthiest. We have concentrated so much wealth in the top brackets that this minority can buy any decision they want from our government, supposedly "of the people, for the people, by the people." Recall Dave Barry's definition of the US Senate, "White male millionaires...working for you." Yeah, right. Not only do the top brackets have all the decision-making power, they also have enough money to effectively insulate themselves from any negative consequences of any decisions they make. This means there's no effective feedback in our control system - our cybernetics have a lethal bug. This is not a formula for a sustainable system at the dawn of the Third Millennium and the Ecological Age. But Timesizing is, because it starts the sharing of wealth at the healthiest level - market-demanded skills and employment.]

1. Fearing control by Microsoft, China backs the Linux system - Relying on Windows is likened to giving a potential enemy the keys to the economy, by Craig Smith, NYT, front page.
   ...China's leaders...are concerned that the country is growing overly dependent on the Windows operating system, which controls computers running everything from banks to Prpes. Jiang Zemin's e-mail box.... A growing number of Chinese have likened dependence on Microsoft to leaving the keys to the country's increasingly computerized economy in the hands of a potential enemy.... Such concerns were only heightened last year when a cryptographer for a Canadian software firm working in the U.S. said he had found a feature in Windows called an NSAKey - as in National Security Agency, the U.S. government agency that gathers electronic signal intelligence worldwide..\..
   But the Chinese government is taking its case...not to the courtroom but to the marketplace.... It is backing the Linux operating system, which was created by a Finnish university student in 1991 and is distributed free to anyone.... Unlike the Windows source code, which Microsoft keeps secret, the Linux code is open for all to see and is freely distributed with the stipulation that anybody can improve it as long as any modifications are shared with the rest of the world..\..
   Though Microsoft said the [NSAKey] was innocuous and no support has been found for any sinister explanation, "no one can guarantee that Windows does not have back doors," said Liu Bo, a former Microsoft executive who is now CEO of Red Flag, a [Chinese] government-backed company set up to create software based on Linux and to encourage a homegrown software industry....
   [Boy, Microsoft must have had a deathwish to put that key in there. And you think that's dumb? Check this out -]
   ...Just a few years ago [Bill Gates] was hailed as a hero by China's young technology enthusiasts. The turning point in Microsoft's image was the introduction of its Chinese-language Windows 95 operating system, which was programmed to display references to "Communist bandits" and to exhort users to "take back the mainland." Beijing, infuriated to learn that Microsoft had used computer programmers in Taiwan to write the software, demanded that the company hire mainland programmers to fix it....
   [Microsoft's] former general manager for China, Juliet Wu...has become a national celebrity with her withering, best-selling expose, "Up Against the Wind: Microsoft, IBM and Me." The picture she paints of Microsoft as an arrogant Goliath feeds into the irritation many Chinese computer users feel toward the company....

2. ["Good, but..." -]
   Mrs. Clinton offers plan for creating jobs upstate, by Jonathan Hicks, NYT, A10.
   ...[involving] tax credits and other federal financing to stimulate job growth among small upstate businesses on the second day of a tour celebrating her first year of campaigning for the Senate.... In a speech before the Rotary Club in Corning [NY], Mrs. Clinton called for a tax credit of up to $3,000 per employee for small businesses that set up operations in communities losing population, like many she is visiting on this campaign swing....
   [Very lovely, but why necessary if this is really a "booming economy" with "record low unemployment"? Funny how different our private- and public-sector perceptions of the economy are - private: "oh, labor is so scarce we need more visas for cheap pretrained youngsters from India" vs. public: "oh, jobs are so scarce we need tons of tax breaks for fluky exceptions to the "economic boom" in inner cities and rural areas all over the place." And God forbid anyone should ask about training....
   [The split in the public sector may be subtler and split incumbents and non-incumbents - incumbents toe the media line that everything is dandy, non-incumbents propose fixes implying that it isn't. Or maybe the split is between the insulated Republicans and Democrat leaders (and sycophantic media) on one side, parroting happytalk, and on the other side, everyone else, much less sure about the current "utopia." Why? Because it's plunged right into G. K. Chesterton's " pan-utopian trap."
   [And another thing, Hillary is "celebrating her first year of campaigning for the Senate"?! What is all this dragged-out campaigning if not camouflaged makework? But then, practically all of government today is makework, despite the so-called "booming economy." Our vaunted "capitalist" system is looking more and more like a privatizer and concentrator of profit but a socializer and centrifuger of risk.
   [It was not always thus. During and after World War II, we had win-win capitalism, where the benefits of technology were spread around and the middle class was strong and growing. With the advent of the "me decade" of the 1980s, we transformed more and more into win-lose capitalism. Downsizing became smart (in fact, "smartsizing") and Chainsaw Dunlap became a national hero. By now this sado-maso virus is embedded in American culture and if we can tear ourselves away from our 24/7, 50-wks/yr work and our cellphones at all, we watch "Survivor" - which really should be called "Eliminator."
   [The road back to win-win capitalism? Timesizing.]

• France and democracy, letter to editor by Sujatha Byravan, NYT, A18.
  "French pique" (editorial, July 1) ignores the main issues raised by the French foreign minister, Hubert Védrine, when France declined to sign the Warsaw declaration of democratic principles. Mr. Védrine's statement spoke about the need for democracy to grow from within a country and not be forced upon it from the outside. It referred to different forms of democracy, noting that each case has circumstances making it unique.
  There is no need for a declaration on democracy at this moment, other than for the United States to try to gain praise for something it has done little to promote worldwide except through force or the providing of arms. Why not work with existing institutions like the United Nations? Why create a new forum?
  It is disingenuous to call France's action a rejection of American leadership, because the French took a more nuanced position about the multihued nature of democracy.
  [And hey, so what if France rejects American "leadership" on some self-seeking cosmetology? If your best friends can't tell you you've got bad breath, who can?]

1. In Britain, debate over adopting Euro gains in intensity - Foreign businesses say its strength hurts them, but Britons love their pound, by Alan Cowell, NYT, C4.
   [Don't do it, Britain! Currency unification before skills and employment integration (e.g., via a common workweek fluctuation vs. under-employment and overtime-to-training conversion à la Timesizing) is way premature.]
   ...The government published data [yesterday] that showed overseas investment in Britain had soared to a record despite [or because of?! - ed.] the strength of the British pound [- undercutting] complaints...that...Britain [was] an expensive place to manufacture goods for export.... The euro, adopted by 11 of the EU's 15 members, has fallen sharply against the pound and the dollar since its introduction 18 months ago. That weakness has made British exports to Europe, in particular, more expensive....
   ["Keep that pound! Keep that pound!"]

2. [Strange but hopeful fullpage ad on back of Globe business section -]
   a recent study shows that when you CODDLE YOUR CUSTOMERS, IT'S YOUR SHAREHOLDERS WHO FEEL ALL WARM AND FUZZY, ad by Siebel eBusiness, Boston Globe, C28.
   [Holy smoke, can business be rediscovering customers after all the past decade's exclusive concern for shareholders?!]

3. Ambivalence about death and taxes, op ed by Ellen Goodman, Boston Globe, A15.
   ...Ever since the House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted to eliminate all taxes to heirs and heiresses of the very rich, there has been an odd public argument... We are debating the fate of a $50B/yr tax break for people who will inherit from the richest 2% of Americans. These are folks who leave more than the $675,000 (and rising) that's already tax-free.... Under current rules, heirs and heiresses will be able to inherit a million bucks taxfree by 2006..\..
   Politicians defending heirs keep assuring us that they are really protecting family farms and small businesses. Indeed, [they accuse their] opponents...of "class warfare".... [But] family farms and small businesses should be saved through simpler, targeted reforms..\..
   What's missing from the argument as it heads to the Senate is any recognition of the underlying ambivalence that most Americans - taxpayers or family members - have toward the whole question of inherited wealth - indeed, to[ward] the [whole] question of bootstraps vs. wills, of sweat equity vs. [handout] wealth.
   The classic American tale we were all raised on starred the self-made man. The log cabin origins, the rags-to-riches success stories are a part of our democratic [or plutocratic? - ed.] lore. Monikers like "heir" and "heiress" are no more flattering than "spoiled brat." We say that anyone can (and should) make it in America. But on his or her own.
   In the past decade the argument over welfare was built on the idea that the poor were demoralized by the dole.... A certain edge, a fire in the belly, a hunger are assumed to fuel success. Yet we...cheer people when a fortune falls in their laps,... envy the entitled \and\ play the lottery....
   [And in general, we strangely don't have the idea that the rich are demoralized by handouts. The poor are demoralized by handouts we believe, but the rich are not. Our solution to our widening income gap is crippled by our widespread ambivalence. We are our own worst enemies in this vital matter, because we want to harbor the fantasy that we ourselves could get rich - without limits. However, the rich themselves do have the idea that they - or their children - are demoralized by handouts.]
   Those who have already made it - and have an estate big enough to be taxed - are...ambivalent in dealing with their will-be heirs. In New York, the new rich are actually taking courses on kids and money. They aren't sure whether their sons and daughters will be enabled or disabled by dollars. [See our 6/12/2000 story, "For today's wealthy parents, tips on brat control."] They want to give their kids "everything." But they worry that wealth will undermine such [basic values] as character and work ethic. Even billionaire Bill Gates, who's worth roughly $60B, says he's going to leave his kids a mere $10m apiece.... Some [wealthy people] believe that their adult children should start [right] from scratch.... Others want to "scrimp" [our quotes - ed.] to leave their kids rich. And if they can't take it with them, they want to leave what they earned intact....
   As for public policy? Well, we don't believe that America is a plutocracy [even though it generally is - ed.]. We don't even like to acknowledge the incredible growing gap between rich and poor.... But we are now in the midst of a vast transfer of wealth from one generation to another. Plutocracy here we come....
   Whatever our ambivalence...we ought to agree when enough is enough.
   [Ellen here raises the question behind the Chesterton pan-utopian flaw (the blithe assumption that no one will want more than his or her share) - namely, how do we define "share"??? We have tended in the last 67 years to define "share" in monetary terms, but this tends to lead to handouts, such as the welfare system, and create dependency. At Timesizing.com we define "share" first in terms of work and employment - and skills. We start by defining the problem of under-employment in a regularly repeating referendum - "anyone who has worked less than ___ (fill in the blank) hrs/wk for over the last ___ weeks is 'under-employed' - any under-employment rate of over ___% is problematic and should trigger an adjustment in the overtime-to-training conversion threshold - and any adjustment should happen at the rate of ___ fraction of an hour per quarter." In other words, we should not be so obsessed with the cosmetics of adjusting the interest rate every quarter as with the fundamentals of adjusting the work share per person every quarter - as more and more robotization, computerization, automation, cybernetics, mechanization etc. etc. rushes into our economy. This referendum approach means we get the problem to define a counter-problem (over-employment) which we convert, on the fly, into a solution (on-the-job training and hiring). We don't stop workoholics dead at a certain point in their unlimited workweek like France's primitive 35-hr workweek design - we transform them into a positive economic force - the market-targeted origin of our most strategic skill transfer and job creation. We insist that they shift gears after a certain level of workweek, and guarantee us that they are doing it for love, not money - for deflationary incentive, not inflationary incentive. This is the real, completely positive way to control inflation, not our current self-damaging way of (raising interest rates and) fostering unemployment and fear in the workplace - which artificially restrains the growth of our consumer base and of "effective demand" for goods and services. Our economic growth today is a pathetic fraction of what it would be if we'd quit "cutting off our nose to spite our face" in our crude and hopelessly inefficient inflation-fighting methods. More details in our book.]

4. Cleaning up elections in Massachusetts - Our legislative leaders have an opportunity not only to support clean elections but to champion the issue, op ed by Warren Tolman, Boston Globe, A15.
   ...Nov. 3, 1998...voters in Massachusetts were abundantly clear on the need for clean elections: Two-thirds of them supported the Clean Elections campaign. The voter message was loud and clear:
   • Reform the campaign finance system in Massachusetts;
   • level the playing field between incumbents and challengers;
   • limit the influence of special interests on the political process; and
   • provide public financing support for candidates willing to work within the new system....
   The [referendum] question was passed in November 1998, but will not take effect until the 2002 elections.... ...Last year...Democratic legislative leadership passed a measure to gut the reform.... Gov. Paul Celucci vetoed the Legislature's last attempt to gut the law, but the Legislature is still threatening to undermine the electorate....
   A clean elections candidate, after raising a qualifying amount of money in small increments up to $100 from Massachusetts residents, can focus on issues instead of money....
   [Mass. already makes it too hard to qualify with all the signature requirements. Requiring a qualifying amount of money in small increments is yet another obstacle. These attempts to prevent frivolous candidates are too costly - let the voters deal with frivolous campaigners. Clowns add perspective to any situation anyway. Best solution - get money completely OUT of the process and make "news" media do their job and treat candidates as sources of news, not revenues. Only then will they lose their incentive to favor big-money campaigns and start obeying the "equal coverage" laws, which today are completely unenforced.]
   No system is perfect, but our system will be far closer to perfect if our Democratic legislative leaders focus on abiding by the will of the electorate instead of on how to thwart it. Voters may not remember every candidate's position on every issue, but they will remember where candidates stood on what is quickly becoming a litmus test for truly representative politics.
   [And while we're working on that battlefront, let's cut to the chase and extend our issue-oriented referendums and citizen initiatives.]

1. Indonesia's president parries criticism with a rapier tongue, by Seth Mydans, NYT, A4.
   ...Abdurrahman Wahid [is] "a great master who looks like a complete walk-over," said [his] biographer, Greg Barton, an Australian political scientist.... Criticism [has] dogged Mr. Wahid since his improbable election last October.
   [Let's see. Who in American history gained power in an unlikely way and turned out great - "country bumpkin" Lincoln, "dangerous reformer" TR, crippled "traitor to his class" FDR, "Dewey has won, oops..." Truman....]
   Nobody saw it coming when Mr. Wahid...announced that the police would investigate up to 10 members of Parliament on suspicion of fomenting violence and unrest.... There is a surge of violent unrest around the country....
   • a religious war in the far eastern Maluku islands, where more than 2,500 Christians and Muslims have been killed in the last 18 months...
   • communal fighting on the islands of Sulawesi, Bali and Lombok...
   • bomb blasts at mosques and churches...
   • insurgencies in the provinces of Aceh and Irian Java that appear to be receiving outside aid
   The unseen hands behind them may include military plotters, local power blocs, ambitious politicians and people from the former government \of dictator Suharto\.
   "There is one big fish," [Wahid] said on Saturday, "but we haven't found the supporting evidence yet. Once we catch him it will all be over." ..."Gus Dur has done his political homework," said Mr. Barton, using the president's nickname. "In this, he is brilliant."...
   [Let's hope he prevails after the decades of repression.]

2. [Another dose of our own "medicine"? -]
   French prosecutor investigates U.S. global listening system, by Suzanne Daley, NYT, A7.
   ...Jean-Pierre Dintilhac has ordered the French counterintelligence agency, called DST, to appraise the actions of..\..an American global surveillance system...named Echelon..\..that listens in on millions of telephone calls, faxes and e-mails each day....
   [So whatever happened to our obsessive concern about privacy? Or does it only apply to our privacy - and not to anyone else's?]
   The system links computers in at least seven sites around the world to receive, analyze and sort information captured from satellite communications.
   [Who the hay runs this paranoid monster, anyway?]
   ...Ma56ny feaer that America's vast surveillance system, developed in the cold war [has] been converted to "economic espionage"..\.. American officials have repeatedly denied that. [But] a report commissioned by..\..the European Parliament...said there was evidence that the Echelon system had twice helped American companies gain an advantage over Europeans....
   [Thank God for the feisty French, say we. Protect us from ourselves!]

3. As pay debate intensifies, [U.S.] teacher salaries rise 3% - [But] wages remain low on a white-collar scale, by Jodi Wilgoren, NYT, A10.

1. Study: Women's pay passes men's in some fields, still lags in most, AP via Boston Globe, D7.
   ...according to the annual survey by Working Woman magazine. Overall the study found that women continue to narrow the pay gap with men. Those results jibe with data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which reported in May that women earn 76.5 cents on the dollar compared to men. That's an increase of 0.2 cents from 1998 and a 14-cent increase since the government started keeping track in 1979. But the...study found wide variations depending on the industry..\.. Some fields \where\ women's pay passes men's [are -]
   • advertising...
   • physics...
   • occupational therapy....

2. [Nader lobs a letter "bomb" at the NYT's dumb editorial -]
   Why I'm running..., letter to editor by Ralph Nader, NYT, A18.
   Re "Mr. Nader's misguided crusade" (editorial, June 30): Is Al Gore's candidacy so fragile that it should be insulated from challenges by third-party candidates, as you suggest? If my candidacy as the Green Party's nominee for president subtracts more from Mr. Gore, it is because the Democratic Pary under this administration has become little more than a corporate shadow of its former self.
   Contrary to the thesis of your editorial, setting aside posturing, there are very few major differences between the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates and even fewer differences in the sources of funds that overflow their parties' campaign chests. The corporate power structure dominates both parties and determines the limits of their meager initiatives.
   Major problems, like
   • concentration of corporate power
   • corporate crime and
   • corporate welfare
   • health care
   • continued degradation of inner cities and
   • child poverty
   linger on election after election without solution, regardless of which party is in the White House. Facile rhetoric becomes a substitute for leadership. The Clinton-Gore record offers no real hope for changing the concentration of power by the few over the needs of the many.
   You suggest that adding new voices to the political debate is cluttering the playing field. Your desire to limit the national political campaign and the ensuing debate to two lookalike parties is most remarkable in its disdain for genuine competition.
   [That NYT editorial really was a disgrace. We would have immediately cancelled our NYT subscription if there was any competitor to switch to. Clearly the editors of the NYT at the dawn of the Third Millennium are pathetically unworthy of their position and hopelessly "unclear on the concept" of democracy. With thinking like that, the "first" are well on their way to becoming "last," and pushing people into the arms of the new news delivery system, the Internet. It's all the NYT can do each day to publish the daily schedule of Bush and Gore, when the least they should be doing is telling us what Nader, Buchanan and Browne are up to as well.
   [On the other hand, Nader himself has a platform not much better than the old liberal grocery list of Ted Kennedy. Both's list of issues makes no distinction between levels of issues and draws no relationships between the issues listed, as in, which should come first, which second, etc. Which solution contributes most to the solution of which others? Which one solution contributes most on the list? Is the list complete? Is there a Pert Chart or critical path through the list? What's the focussed strategy? How do we concentrate countervailing power and all push together on the most strategic problem, - then all "transish" to the next most strategic...? Where on the "mountain range" of issues can the fewest people exert the least pressure to trigger the biggest avalanche of solutions?
   [Nader's depersonalization of the problems as "concentration of corporate power" also violates one of Saul Alinsky's first "rules for radicals" to help them make problems actionable, - namely, "personalize the problem." The progressively more actionable phrasings of this issue are -
   1. Nader's "concentration of corporate power"
   2. concentration of personal power
   3. concentration of personal wealth
   4. concentration of personal income (compare less-actionable phrasing: "widening income gap")
   5. concentration of high-demand personal skills and employment
   [Timesizing starts the balancing process with the last item here and works backwards through this reverse-prioritized list.]

1. [1 UPsizing]
   Turner plans $1.2B expansion and more CNN Online, by Jonathan Robinson, NYT, C7.
   ...The Turner Broadcasting System announced last week...that it will spend $1.2B the next five years to enlarge its downtown Atlanta headquarters and build and renovate parts of offices and studios elsewhere in the city. One of its new downtown towers will house over 3,000 new employees for the online and wireless services it plans....

2. Mexico ends party's 71-year rule - Opposition's Fox sweeps to presidential victory in nation's cleanest vote - 'There has been a commitment and obligation among people voting today that we've never seen before in Mexico.' Carlos Monsivais, prominent writer, by Richard Chacon, Boston Globe, front page.
   MEXICO CITY - Opposition candidate Vicente Fox Quesada...of the National Action Party, or PAN, defeated Francisco Labatista Ochoa, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which had won every election since 1929 [including more recent elections involving] decades of corruption.\...
   Late last night, the Federal Electoral Institute released a national "quick count," declared Fox the winner, and...immediately following the...announcement, President Ernesto Zedillo said on national television that he had called Fox and congratulated him. He was followed by Labatista, who said, "The citizens have made a decision that we should respect, and I'll set the example myself."
   ...Turnout among the country's 59m registered voters was extraordinarily heavy, although no official estimate was available.... Voters had six candidates to choose from, but...Cardenas, the son of a legendary president, was a distant third.... Fox based his platform on one goal: unseating the PRI from the presidency. With his folksy manner and rancher's language, he quickly built a popular following. His sayings, such as referring to the PRI as "more of the same"...were often repeated by ordinary Mexicans with a chuckle. On policy issues, however, there was little difference between Fox and Labatista. Both pledged to
   • increase economic growth
   • reduce the poverty rate, and
   • attack crime, corruption and drug trade....
   But the [PRI] and its heavy-handed tactics has also been blamed for Mexico's deep problems, such as
   • the widening gap between rich and poor
   • rampant corruption, and
   • election fraud..\..
   Voters streamed to the polls all day with an unusual air of seriousness about them. Many expressed confidence that, for the first time, they were making a free choice and that their votes would be counted fairly by the electoral institute, an independent agency created four years ago....

3. Activists plan to counter the conventions - Wits, reformers target traditional party fare, by Lynda Gorov, Boston Globe, front page.
   ...Dismayed that the Republican and Democratic national conventions have become "coronations," a loose coalition of political activists, religious leaders, and social satirists has decided to hold its own [conventions]. In Philadelphia and again in Los Angeles, the plan is to talk issues during the day and party into the night, to make Americans think hard about certain issues and them make them laugh out loud.
   The Shadow Conventions will feature mothers barely able to make ends meet, real people with real problems, mixed in with multimedia presentations intended to inform and amuse. US Senator John McCain is slated to speak on the East Coast, "Politically Incorrect" host Bill Maher on the West.... The emphasis [however] will be on what convention planners view as
   • the government's failed drug policy
   • the growing gap between rich and poor, and
   • the need for serious campaign finance reform....
   [Hmm, why do these three things sound so familiar? (Maybe we're not so different from our third-world neighbor to the south as we think.)]
   The nonpartisan hosts plan to carry the shadow conventions live on the Internet, enabling anyone with a computer to participate in the discussions....

1. [1 UNtakeover]
   Buyout of ResCare is halted by investor group, Bloomberg via NYT, B4.
   ...[A Louisville-based provider of] education services to people with mental and developmental disabilities said its proposed $700m purchase by an investor group was canceled by mutual agreement. ...Analysts said concerns about ResCare's profits deterred investors and lenders from financing the transaction....

2. [Trying to learn from Zimbabwe's mistakes -]
   South Africa: Land reform plea, by Henri Cauvin, NYT, A5.
   The head of the land restitution commission said a sizable infusion of cash was essential if efforts to redistribute land to poor blacks were to avoid confrontations like those in Zimbabwe. In both countries, whites still control much of the most fertile land, and since blacks won majority rule in Zimbabwe and South Africa, land reform has been a pressing issue, with more than 63,000 claims pending in South Africa.

3. Vibrant French economy, by John Tagliabue, NYT, B2.
   [Alas for those who would downspin shorter hours and work sharing! The French economy is prospering on a 35-hour workweek, despite all their predictions of "uncompetitiveness." Maybe the French are actually working smart, not hard, while Americans, British and Japanese are working harder and harder and harder.]
   French unemployment dropped to 9.8% in May, its lowest level in nine years, from a revised 9.9% in April, as vigorous economic growth continued to generate fresh jobs.
   [Not to mention the French refusal to allow high-demand skills, jobs and wages to pile up on fewer and fewer people via US-style overtime, workoholism and "competitive" unlimited hours per day and per week. These may or may not be competitive, but it certainly does not boost effective demand to concentrate spending power by relengthening the workweek to levels not seen for 80-100 years, before the mechanization of agriculture and the automation of manufacturing. By centrifuging employment and spending power, the French are boosting effective demand and expanding their domestic consumer base.]
   While still above the 8.5% average in the 15-nation European Union, unemployment in France has been steadily declining since 1997.
   [It was halfway through 1996 that France started their first major work-spreading efforts. August/96 saw the enactment of the Robien Law by a rightwing government. This law offered companies payroll taxcuts for seven years if they would hire 10% more employees and cut hours 10% to make jobs for them without "featherbedding" - even higher taxcuts if they were willing to do 15% and 15%. By January 1997, 105 French companies had taken advantage of the government's offer. More would follow. The Robien Law was replaced by a less flexible drop in the national workweek maximum from 39 to 35 hours/week in mid-Feb. 2000, enacted by the socialists. Neither law was perfect but this approach is so powerful, effective and comprehensive that even all kinds of imperfect versions of it will induce improvements in the economy. The best version we know of is Timesizing,
   • which keeps the workweek flexible, adjusting very slowly against under-employment (meaning traditional unemployment plus welfare, disability, homelessness, incarceration, with phase-3 inclusion of multiple part-time job holders) and
   • which allows deflationarily motivated employees to work as many hours as they want (- as long as they reinvest overtime/overwork earnings in overtime-targeted training and hiring, their willingness to reinvest being the acid test of whether their lust for long hours is indeed deflationary, or just inflationarily money-motivated).]