Timesizing® Associates

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

9/10/2000  weekend glimmers of intelligence -

• [Another observer steps forward to explode the myth that spoiled & short-sighted CEOs are so carefully fabricating -]
  There's no worker shortage in high-tech industry, letter to editor by Johanna Rothman (*jrothman.com) of Arlington MA, Boston Globe, F6.
  Peter Howe's Sept. 3 front-page story, "State's high-tech job vacancies go unfilled," makes the point that there are unfilled positions in New England's high-tech industry. [However, this does not mean] there is [a] worker shortage. If a worker shortage existed, companies would work differently.
  For example,
  • companies would critically consider which projects to staff and how little to do on a project to bring it to market quickly,
  • managers would encourage telecommuting, and
  • technical people with experience would be the first to be hired, not the last.
  Software organizations are still working the way they did in the '80s.
  If we really had a worker shortage in software, it's possible the economy could speed up, because at least some of the make-work would go away and internal productivity would improve.
  Companies [however,] are not considering which projects to staff and how. Too often they decide to go for long, cumbersome projects. Armies of people working on huge projects do not create great products.... Software companies could change how they staff projects and how they work on projects..\.. Companies could choose to do as little as possible, with as few people as possible.... Instead of starting projects fast and having them go on forever, the projects could start slowly and end quickly.
  Companies that have trouble hiring
  • tend to write narrow job descriptions for these projects
  • without considering transferable skills and investing in training for current and new staff.
  • Too many computer companies think they need people with college degrees in computer science or engineering. That's too bad, because some of the most talented software people I know don't have degrees.
  There is no real shortage of people for technical software jobs. As an industry, we need to reconsider our projects and how we staff those projects.
  [Hear, hear. For further ammo against this idiotic and long-term disastrous myth, see "How to create a skilled-labor shortage" by Richard Rothstein, below on 9/06 (3d item). And for a thorough debunking of our prevailing "Capitalist party line" that we have low unemployment generally, see our unemployment definitions page.]

• [great letter from a 16-year-old]
  The real problem is the exclusion of Nader, letter to editor by Garrett Quinn Jr. of Hanover MA, Boston Globe, F6.
  Regarding your Aug. 27 story about the issue of George W. Bush and Al Gore being unable to confirm dates ("Two camps point fingers on willingness to set a date," Page A26):
  This is a minor problem. The real major problem is the exclusion of the Green Party candidate Ralph Nader. The debate commission's standards for a candidate to be included in the debates are anything but fair. The inclusion of Nader into the debates would allow his message to be finally heard nationwide and also make the debates exciting and invigorating.
  The two "real" candidates running are your typical run-of-the-mill "republocrats" and are extremely dull. This turns off voters and keeps them away from the polls. By inclusion of a true different viewpoint in the debates, there would be a larger turnout at the polls because more people would find that there is a candidate who cares about the well-being of people, not corporations.
  [We get the feeling that "corporations" is becoming a codeword for "the top 1%".]
  I may not be able to vote, and I may be only 16, but if I could vote my clear choice for president would be Ralph Nader.
  [Youth has spoken.]

1. California upholds rule for pollutionless car by '03 - California sees the car of the future; the auto industry sees a train wreck, by Andrew Pollack, NYT, A7.
   [For those freemarket ideologues among you, aren't market forces supposed to automatically take care of the environment and press smartly on toward cutting emissions from cars and trucks???]
   Calif. legislators voted today to keep a rule requiring that 10% of cars offered for sale in the state starting in 2003 emit little or no pollution, a goal that the industry has said is unreachable.
   [What a bunch of real "can-do" guys, huh? Get off your fat butts, you guys, and start at least making hybrids, like Honda and Toyota (see items on 5/06/2000, 3/19-20/2000 and 12/06/99)!]
   The unanimous decision by the Calif. Air Resources Board, which regulates air pollution in the state, is expected to increase the number of electric cars on the road by a huge amount, not only in California but also in New York, Maine, Massachusetts and Vermont, which have opted to follow California pollution rules.... The air agency estimates that under the rule upheld today, 22,000 electric cars would have to be sold in Calif. in 2003, 10 times more than the 2,300 now on the road.
   "...It's a train wreck waiting to happen,"...a director of the public policy center at the GM Corp. said of the rule, which he said would produce a minuscule improvement in air quality at tremendous cost....
   [Well, GM could start by pouring some of dough they're wasting on this entrenched progress-blocker and his whole "policy center" into solving the travel and battery limitations of electric vehicles - not to mention the grotesquely bloated salaries and perks of its top executives - not to mention the moola it wastes on irrelevant charities to try to maintain its PR. GM executives need to quit the nobless oblige routine and just do their job right for a change, and that involves the long term -]
   But the board, whose 11 members are appointed by the governor, said the rule was needed to cut pollution in the long term. "Our future depends on the continuing march to zero-emission vehicles," Alan C. Lloyd, the board chairman, said after a day and a half of public hearings here....
   [And if you have any doubts whatsoever about that, check out the our first Omen item from the Boston Globe today, 9/9/2000, titled, "Ozone hole over Antarctic grows to record size."]

2. Canada: Oil price rebate, by James Brooke, NYT, A6.
   With oil prices at their highest levels in a decade, Ralph Klein, premier of Alberta, Canada's largest oil-producing province, has announced that his government will mail each taxpayer [in Alberta or in all of Canada??] two rebate checks for $100, one in November and one in April. Noting that his province is to take in a record $5.7B from oil and gas royalties, Mr. Klein challenged other oil-rich jurisdictions in North America, like Texas, to follow his lead.
   [And of course, some Arabian oil kingdoms, like Kuwait, have been doing this for years. But this is the best kind of wealth centrifugation of which our capricious old charity system is capable. It's time now to centrifuge systemically, not capriciously, by capping worktime per person and cutting it to absorb our national and global labor surpluses until market forces flexibly drive up wages and centrifuge the ridiculously concentrated wealth out of the top 1% = Timesizing.]

3. Verizon to grant [100-700] stock options to most workers, Bloomberg via NYT, B2.
   [Don't think that will ultimately help (too insecure) but it's in the right direction.]

1. [1 UPsizing]
   Ford to build $400m parts plant in Chicago, Bloomberg via NYT, C3.
   ...[a] manufacturing and distribution complex for its suppliers near a Taurus and Mercury Sable plant in southeast Chicago. The new complex will add about 1,000 jobs to the areas by its completion in 2003....

2. [1UNtakeover]
   Cellular phone spinoff, by Dan Fineren, NYT, C3.
   The Mexican telecommunications giant Telefonos de Mexico [Telmex] said that it would create a spinoff company called America Movil which willl undertake all of Telmex's foreign investments, principally in Latin American cellular phone services.... The Telmex president, Carlos Slim Domit, Latin America's richest man, said that the separation would give his cell phone businesses more independence and flexibility.
   [From his foto, Carlos does not look "slim," but he does look in-Domit-able, sort of like Perry Mason as played by Raymond Burr but less open and approachable.]

3. Veto of estate-tax repeal survives vote in the House, by Richard Stevenson, NYT, A14.
   [Altogether now, "UNtax circulation, TAX concentration." Multi-million-dollar estates are "concentration."]

4. Judge rules doctors can discuss marijuana use, by Todd Purdom, NYT, A14.
   A federal judge in San Francisco ruled [yester]day that federal officials may not interfere with the freedom of Calif. doctors and patients to discuss the potential medical benefits of marijuana, or of doctors to recommend its therapeutic use, under the terms of a state ballot initiative approved by voters in 1996.... The Calif. ballot measure, like the one in Arizona, did not remove the longstanding federal prohibition against doctors' prescribing drugs like marijuana and heroin, in which the government recognizes no medical value.
   [So we can assume it recognizes medical value in nicotine and alcohol because they're legal?!?]
   It simply gave patients found with small amounts of marijuana a defense if they could show that a doctor had recommended it orally or in writing....

5. The sound of gunfire in America, 3rd letter to editor, by Peggy Polenberg of NYC, NYT, A28.
   ...Everyone in the U.S. who owns a vehicle is required by law to carry liability insurance. This is for the protection of the driver, passengers and the other people on the road. A car is [potentially] a lethal weapon. Why doesn't Congress require liability insurance for the 190m guns in America?...

6. When it's time to debate, add Nader's voice, letter to editor by Robert Garisto of Bellport NY, NYT, A28.
   ...The Democratic and Republican Parties receive campaign money from many of the same entrenched interests, and both have moved to the center, embracing policies to sway the swing voter. Alternative, innovative plans are rarely heard by the general public, and at the one time when many pay attention to politics, the scope of debate is actually narrowed.
   Ralph Nader is ranging from 5 to 9 points in national polls and has been certified to receive federal campaign money. He should therefore be allowed to take part in the debates.
   [A big AMEN to that.]

• [Impossible! - unemployment drops again in the 'uncompetitive' German economy with its high wages and 6-wk vacations - no fair!]
  German unemployment drops, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
  The number of unemployed people fell for the 10th time in 11 months in August...by 18,000 from July, after dropping a revised 12,000 the previous month..\..as an economic expansion encouraged companies to hire...the federal labor office said. The jobless rate, adjusted for seasonal swings, was unchanged at 9.5%, the Bundesbank reported. The report may ease concerns that German expansion is losing its momentum.
  [So while us Yanks punish ourselves with long hours, short vacations, and low wages, the Jerries have shorter hours, longer vacations and higher wages - and our predictions of doom for them just aren't panning out. No wonder they're not interested in our chest-thumping. (Ohmigod, you don't suppose we could be suffering for nothing - except maybe to keep telling ourselves that we're 'competitive' and to push Bill Gates' second hundred-billion?!!)]

1. [1 UPsizing - 15 new jobs]
   Two agencies form e-services unit, by Courtney Kane, NYT, C8.
   MARC USA in Pittsburgh and Change Technology Partners in Greenwich, Conn. have invested $20m in cash and stock to start eHotHouse, an e-services agency that will focus on strategy, application systems and marketing. EHotHouse will open with 15 employees working from offices in New York and seven other cities....
   [so, an average of less than 2 employees per city.]

2. [1 UNtakeover, valued at $746.9m now, 840+260= $1100m on 6/23/00]
   Fisher Scientific rises after halting PSS buy, Bloomberg via Boston Globe, C9.
   [Don't tell us the stock market is showing signs of intelligence?!]
   Shares of [Hampton, NH-based] Fisher Scientific International Inc., a leading seller of laboratory equipment, rose 44% [to $31.56] on news it had ended its plan to buy [Jacksonville-based] PSS World Medical Inc. for $746.9m.... The companies didn't give any details [but] Fisher...will not pay PSS a $33.5m breakup fee....
   [Ohoh, sounds like PSS had been naughty.]
   Shares of PSS, a medical products supplier, fell....

3. [a NYT columnist exposes the bogus 'labor shortage' -]
   How to create a skilled-labor shortage,
   by Richard Rothstein, NYT, A26.
   To alleviate apparent shortages of computer programmers, Pres. Clinton and Congress have agreed to raise a quota on H-1b's, the temporary visas for skilled foreigners. The annual limit will go to 200,000 next year, up from 65,000 only three years ago. The imported workers, most of whom come from India, are said to be needed because American schools do not graduate enough young people with science and math skills...
   But the crisis is a mirage. High-tech companies portray a shortage, yet it is our memories that are short: only yesterday there was a glut of science and math graduates. The computer industry took advantage of that glut by reducing wages. This discouraged youths from entering the field, creating the temporary shortages of today. Now, taking advantage of a public preconception that school failures have created the problem, industry finds a ready audience for its demands to import workers.
   This newspaper covered the earlier surplus extensively.
   • In 1992, it reported that 1 in 5 college graduates had a job not requiring a college degree.
     [Implying there weren't enough degree-requiring jobs for that 20% of college graduates.]
   • A 1995 article headlined "Supply Exceeds Demand for Ph.D..'s in Many Science Fields" cited nationwide unemployment of engineers, mathematicians and scientists. "Overproduction of Ph.D. degrees," it noted, "seems to be highest in computer science."
     
   • Michael S. Teitelbaum, a demographer who served as vice chairman of the Commission on Immigration Reform, said in 1996 that there was "an employers' market" for technology workers, partly because of post-cold-war downsizing in aerospace.
     
   In fields with real labor scarcity, wages rise. Yet despite accounts of dot-com entrepreneurs' becoming millionaires, trends in computer technology do not confirm a need to import legions of programmers.
   • Salary offers to new college graduates in computer science averaged $39,000 in 1986 and had declined by 1994 to $33,000 (in constant dollars). The trend reversed only in the late 1990's.
   • The West Coast median salary for experienced software engineers was $71,000 in 1999, up only 10% (in constant dollars) from 1990. This pay growth of about 1% a year suggests no labor shortage.
   • Norman Matloff, a computer science professor at the University of California, contends that high-tech companies create artificial shortages by refusing to hire experienced programmers. Many with technological degrees no longer work in the field. By age 50, fewer than half are still in the industry. Luring them back requires higher pay.
   Industry spokesmen say older programmers with outdated skills would take too long to retrain.
   [But everyone's skills are outdated when software revs change every two months!]
   ...Dr. Matloff counters by saying that when they urge more H-1B visas, lobbyists demonstrate a shortage by pointing to vacancies lasting many months. Companies could train older programmers in less time than it takes to process visas for cheaper foreign workers.
   [Dr. Matloff might also have pointed out the raised job qualifications relative to the 1980s, a result of the flood of resumes that spoiled high-tech employers, made them think they need do no training, and indeed, made them think they could choose cheap young kids whom they could easily pressure to work megahours of unpaid overtime.]
   Dr. Matloff says that in addition to the pay issue, the industry rejects older workers because they will not work the long hours typical at Silicon Valley companies with youthful "singles" styles. Imported labor, he argues, is only a way to avoid offering better conditions to experienced programmers. H-1B workers, in contrast, cannot demand higher pay: visas are revoked if workers leave their sponsoring companies.
   [= the return of indentured servitude.]
   As for young computer workers, the labor market has recently tightened, with rising wages, because college students saw earlier wage declines and stopped majoring in math and science. In 1996, American colleges awarded 25,000 bachelor's degrees in computer science, down from 42,000 in 1985.
   The reason is not that students suddenly lacked preparation. On the contrary, high school course-taking in math and science, including advanced placement, had climbed. Further, math scores have risen: last year 24% of seniors who took the SAT scored over 600 in math. But only 6% planned to major in computer science, and many of these cannot get into college programs.
   The reason: colleges themselves have not yet adjusted to new demand. In some places, computer science courses are so oversubscribed that students must get on waiting lists as high school juniors.
   With a time lag between student choice of majors and later job quests, high schools and colleges cannot address short-term supply and demand shifts for particular professions. Such shortages can be erased only by raising wages to attract those with needed skills who are now working in other fields - or by importing low-paid workers.
   [Or by using the incidence of overtime itself to target and trigger on-the-job training, à la Timesizing's Phase 2 and Phase 3.]
   For the longer term, rising wages can guide counselors to encourage well-prepared students to major in computer science and engineering, and colleges will adjust to rising demand. But more H-1B immigrants can have a perverse effect, as their lower pay signals young people to avoid this field in the future, keeping the domestic supply artificially low.
   [Hear, hear. A wonderful article. Many thanks to Richard Rothstein (at e-mail rrothstein@nytimes.com). For further ammo against the idiotic and disastrous-in-the-long-term myth of "worker shortage" in high tech, see "There's no worker shortage in high-tech industry" by Johanna Rothmann, above (on 9/10). And for a thorough debunking of our prevailing "Capitalist party line" that we have low unemployment generally, see our unemployment definitions page.]

4. Greenspan urges mortgage-subsidy review, AP via NYT, C8.
   ...[that is,] urging Congress to review lower-cost financing and other government subsidies for the mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac [because they] have become so big that they pose potential risks to taxpayers, who might be asked ["asked"? - we're never "asked" - we're forced] to bail them out if they become financially troubled....
   [This huge subsidy for the mortgage, real estate, and construction industries is just another of example of our huge mistake in 1933 when we balked at guaranteeing full employment by cutting the workweek to spread the work and raise wages by resorbing the wage-depressing "army of the unemployed," and instead turned to massive government makework and the mixed-blessing mirage of the minimum wage. Almost everything government does today is makework, since we effectively froze the workweek at a technological obsoleted level already back in 1940. And with a frozen workweek plus unending waves of work-saving technology, government gets subtly sucked into desperately trying to generate enough work to keep the population spinning their wheels at an outdated and ever more bloated workweek level. Government of course can't keep up and the workforce gets progressively marginalized, with consequent increases in the working poor, disability, homelessness, incarceration, and suicide. Better to yank these subsidies and if we "need more affordable housing," translate that into "need higher general wage levels," translate that into "need less wage-depressing surplus labor," and translate that into a gradually reducing workweek - maybe just an hour a quarter or even a year - the rate can be determined by referendum.
   [And what about inflation? We harness the deflationary influence of nationwide voluntarism and charity by directing it to "begin at home" in the sense that if anyone really wants to help the disadvantaged in a quintessential way, let him work his old hours (or longer) as the workweek comes down, and reinvest his overtime earnings in on-the-job training and hiring in overtime-targeted skills. This deflationarily incentived, work-sharing overtime will offset the general overdependence of our economy on inflationary incentive (the money motive). People who do not have deflationary/voluntary incentive will tend to stop at the reduced workweek ceiling, capping their "just doing it for the money" resentment and directing their desire for more money into training in skills where they can make more money within the reduced "straight time" workweek. They will tend to gravitate into jobs where they have more inherent job satisfaction (= deflationary). Thus wage-push inflation will be partially reduced. What wage-push inflation there is because of raise-demands by the newly scarcity-empowered labor, will be offset by the reduction of currently exhorbitant levels of executive pay, as income and wealth centrifuges out of its current high concentration and into the hands of people who will go out and actually spend it.
   [And taxes can be healthily reduced even further by phasing out all sales taxes, value-added taxes and goods&services taxes. If more tax revenues are needed, let the graduated personal income tax be restored. Tax concentration, not circulation. Concentration doesn't need help - it is constantly helping itself in thousands of very effective ways, large and small. Money is trickling down to the lower brackets but gushing up to the top brackets. Circulation does need help, because without help free-market competition will tend to a situation of 1% of the population owning 99% of the wealth = Third World proportions. Already in America the top 1% owns as much as the 'bottom' 95% and rising. This "great leak upward" calls for a dynamic, market-oriented centrifuge mechanism such as Timesizing.
   [Another good government subsidy to drop would be the national debt -]
   Days could turn risky for investors if dwindling US debt disappears, by Scott Nelson, Boston Globe, front page.
   ...Treasuries are a safe haven for investors....
   [And the national debt resides in Treasury bills. So the huge national debt and all the interest we taxpayers pay on it day after day is yet another chunk of welfare for the rich and a subsidy for the financial industry, lending them undeserved stability as they destabilize our consumer base by advising company after company to downsize in order to hype the company's stock price and their own commission. The trouble with these 'capitalists' is they're not - they don't have the courage of their convictions. They're nothing but corporate socialists, and pathetically short-sighted and narrowly interested. They object to the government helping the poor, but they want the government to help them, however rich they be. The truth is, we have no surplus if it depends on counting-in any social security funds and we have no surplus while the national debt is as high as Reagan jacked it. Let's pay it down to 1970 levels before we start yapping about "surplus." And this paydown should be automatic so the scroungers in Congress can't get their sleazy paws on it.]

1. Chronic flight delays tied to deregulation, pointer digest (to A1), NYT, C1.
   Most experts now believe that delays in the nation's air traffic system, which have risen nearly 50% in the last 5 years, will get worse.... The FAA...predicts that by 2010 the number of airline passengers will rise 59%, to 1B. About 70% of that increase will occur at the country's 28 largest airports. The story of how the nation's air travel system reached its current crisis can be traced back to one of the Government's most "successful" [our quotes -ed.] initiatives - airline deregulation - and to one of its longest and most expensive bureaucratic blunders: the FAA's ill-fated attempts to develop a new air traffic control system.
   [Guess they never heard - "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"]

2. Temporary work finds a following, digest, NYT, C1.
   ...The percentage of people working for personnel companies - those that supply temporary or continuing help on a contractual basis - has risen. Mark Zandi of Economy.com...said, "Not only has pay for such jobs increased significantly, but an increasing number also pay benefits. Moreover, these jobs offer employees significant flexibility."
   [And hey, if all jobs these days are prone to layoff and in that sense, temporary anyway, why not cut the pose and be honest about it?!]

3. FTC threatens to block merger of AOL, Time Warner - Reportedly pressing for concessions, AP via Boston Globe, D2.
   [Quit hemming & hawing and just zap it.]

• 9/03  Vanguard's Bogle weighs in on saving Social Security - [John] Bogle says the only genuine solutions are the toughest ones, and consequently the ones the politicians are most likely to avoid, by Dunstan Prial, AP via Boston Globe, F7.
  [Cutting right to the chase...]
  ...Social Security taxes must either be raised, or the benefits paid out lowered, he said.
  [Flat-taxers like Steve Forbes would have a lot more credibility if they advocated removing the cap on the flat Social Security tax - which is a flat tax - and allowing it to go all the way up with actual incomes. This is the easiest way to raise the social security tax, and we're surprised this article doesn't mention it. Instead, Bogle moves toward "dying on the job" -]
  Those solutions could be softened if, for example, the retirement age was gradually increased to match longer life expectancies, Bogle observed. That way people would start receiving their benefits later in life....
  [Let's face it, the whole prospect of "pension" for more and more of us, especially those getting targeted for layoff in our fifties or just before retirement vesting or commencement, is either dying on the job in some part-time, minimum-wage setting or...the Kevorkian kit. Bogle's no-load Vanguard funds get a boost on the previous page though -]
  The best financial advice you've received?, by Dolores Kong, Boston Globe, F6.
  [Again, cutting to the chase -]
  David E. Gumpert...author of a new book, "Better than money...," [says that number] one is to bet on the stock market. Second is, when you bet..., use no-load mutual funds as opposed to buying individual stocks....
  [There's the plug for Vanguard.]
  And his advice for people who receive stock options? "...Take off your employee hat and put on your investor hat."...

• 9/03  It's labor's day again - The booming US economy returns some of the clout and the members taht unions have lost over the years, by Kimberly Blanton, Boston Globe, F1.
  [But labor is still roadkill. Basically, labor was poised for heaven in April, 1933. That month, on the 6th, a maximum workweek per person of 30 hours passed the US Senate. It was jerky, arbitrary and rigid, but it would have hired a lot more people, mopped up the wage-battering 25% unemployment of the Depression, centrifuged wealth and got it back in circulation, united the population, and ended the Depression in a matter of months, especially if the 30-hour figure were flexed up and lowered further if underemployment persisted. But labor stupidly allowed Saint FDR to ridicule the shorter-hours movement and substitute a load of government makework which has survived in multiplying disguises ever since. Oh yes, and he substituted the minimum wage, which many of the keener minds of the time sensed would become what it has become, a maximum wage for increasing numbers of obsoletely skilled workers. And with a management culture so spoiled by desperate, increasingly irrelevant resumes, job qualifications have gone up and training has gone down, down, down.]

1. President decides to put off work on missile shield - Successor's issue - Clinton says technology does not yet justify firset construction, by Eric Schmidt, NYT, front page.
   European leaders praise US antimissile decision, by Patrick Tyler, NYT, A7.
   [Basically, if we want assisted death, we can do it ourselves, as the next story testifies -]

2. Assisted-death meeting stirs debate, concerns, by Anne Barnard, Boston Globe, B3.
   ...The Park Plaza Hotel in Boston [is the] scene of the World Conference of Assisted Dying this weekend. The gathering, sponsored by the Hemlock Society, [has as its president] Mary Gallnor [who offers] to talk with [opponents] about how best to [craft] assisted-suicide legislation.... Such legislation...has been enacted only in Oregon....
   [Australia briefly had a law, and we believe several European countries have such laws ongoing. There are problems along this path, but they are the right problems. Absolutizing human life in an age of overpopulation and regardless of quality is just too simple and increasingly cruel and wasteful. We need the living to really want to be alive. We need to stop fighting what people want, when it only concerns themselves.]

3. [Occasionally you get a wealthy person who sees beyond their insulation. Here's mention of a book by one -]
   An early defense of [wealth circulation, not concentration], letter to editor by Joseph Chapline of Newbury NH, Boston Globe, A14.
   ...A book I read in the 1930s [was] written by one of the few wealthy people who went along with President Roosevelt [who] at the time was seen as the great enemy of management and people of wealth. The book, "Successful Living in this Machine Age," was written by Edward A. Filene, son of the store's founder. The gist of his argument was: Yes, I am a millionaire, but what can I do with my money? I still only eat three meals a day; I can wear out only a few suits of clothes per year, and I will buy only one or two radios (this was before television). Yet if you take my million dollars and spread it among a thousand families, think how many pairs of shoes, suits of clothing, and radios will be bought. Filene's idea was that money distributed among the working class would be immediately reintroduced into the economy.... Did you ever try to stop a teenager from spending money? As soon as he or she gets it, it's back in circulation. And the family struggling to survive on $6 per hour will put any additional money back into circulation, too.
   [Just as Will Rogers said, "Money is like manure - it's no good unless it's spread around." Unfortunately, the letter writer is arguing for a higher minimum wage, which is the lame way to accomplish his goal of centrifuging wealth, the way with which the labor movement and working people in general have been losing ground with over the last two generations. The minimum wage always has to be adjusted upward every two years, too little too late, and it creates a gap in the job ladder at the bottom that makes it hard for people trying to enter or re-enter the workforce. Plus, labor can no more levitate itself by pulling up on its own bootstraps than it can improve its position in a sustainable way by fooling around only with lower limits. That just repeats Chesterton's pan-utopian flaw.
   [The biggest problem in current economies and current economic theory is the Great Leak Upward - the lack of an effective limit on income and wealth concentration and hoarding. There is no avoidance of the uncomfortable necessity of an upper limit, and the easiest place to position an upper limit is on work per person, the alternatives being, e.g., income per person and wealth per person. As long as you have no effective upper limit, any lower limit is ineffective, because, e.g., in the money dimensions, a higher lower limit just creates enough inflation to ratchet the whole unlimited disparity upward.
   [But an effective maximum workweek, gradually lowered, can create the kind of economic boom usually only seen in wars and plagues. How? By creating the same kind of shortage of labor hours in the job market that harnesses market forces and raises pay and benefits in an incredibly flexible way, instead of imposing an arbitrary and rigid floor on pay. War and plague withdraw labor hours from the market in the most stupid and destructive way. Cutting the workweek per person does it in the most intelligent and conservative way. And it doesn't create the kind of gap in the bottom of the job ladder that the minimum wage creates - which basically says, you can't pay anybody less than $6 an hour so there will be no legal work for less than $6 an hour in this country. That is incredibly stifling and heavyhanded. The heavyhandedness of imposing an absolute maximum workweek can be modified by letting anyone work any overtime who is willing to reinvest in overtime-targeted training and hiring. In other words, if they are willing to help us set up the much-needed continuous training function in our increasingly accelerated high tech economy. The non-monetary voluntarist incentive (deflationary) of this minority of people also helps control inflation by counterbalancing the usual monetary incentive (inflationary) of straight time. This is all part of the Timesizing program (Phase 3, actually).]

1. 2 UNtakeovers -
   
   1. Korean auto spinoff, by Samuel Len, NYT, C4.
      The South Korean government permitted the Hyundai Motor Co. to be spun off from its parent, the Hyundai Group.... The spinoff of Hyundai Motor is expected to include its sister automaker, Kia Motors Corp., and several component makers.
      [Ah, how do you mean, "include"???]
   2. Lucent will spin off 3 businesses to form enterprise networking firm ["Avaya"], AP via Boston Globe, F3.
      ...spinning off [to] shareholders as part of a special dividend....
      [We'll stop there because the article is so poorly written, we can't tell what the 3 businesses are or even for sure if Avaya is the name of the new firm.]

2. France proposes tax cuts of $16B over 3 years, pointer digest (to A12, by John Tagliabue, NYT, C1.
   Nudged by Germany, and probably providing an example to Italy, France became the second of continental Europe's big three economies to propose a large package of tax cuts. The proposal, totaling $16B over three years, is part of a wave of similar measures being enacted across Europe as governments react to increased tax revenue because of expanding economies and declining unemployment.
   [What? People in France have a 35-hour workweek and 5-6 week vacations - and now they're getting tax cuts as well? HERESY! Us hardworking, family-neglecting, 24/7, masochistic Americans and British are supposed to know best. Our self-flagellating way is supposed to the The Truth. How can these damn Frenchies and Euros be getting their cake and eating it too? = Getting shorter worktime and more leisure and rest and time for their families and their communities and their causes, AND getting economic expansion and less taxes as well?! It's not fair. It makes us look REALLY STUPID and self-hating. Oh well, maybe it's won't last -]
   The cuts, while differing by country, are intended to give a measure of stability to a tenuous spurt of economic growth.

3. Mexico repays its debt to the IMF, AP via NYT, C17.
   Mexico['s] Treasury Secretariat...repaid all of its remaining debt to the IMF - about $3B - dating from a 1995 bailout package that helped rescue Mexico's economy....

4. [U.S.] Machinists reach an agreement with General Dynamics, Reuters via NYT, C4.
   About 1,500 striking machinists at the Bath Ironworks shipyard in Maine, where Navy destroyers are built, reached a tentative settlement with the General Dynamics Corp. yesterday after a 20-hour negotiating session.... The International Assoc. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers Local 6 agreed to allow General Dynamics to cross-train workers building complex ships liek the $900m Aegis destroyer.... In return, General Dynamics, based in Falls Church, Va., agreed not to use the cross-training provision when layoffs are in effect....
   [So how can the employer, General Dynamics in this case, get to use the cross-training provision all the time? By timesizing instead of downsizing, of course, and NEVER "having layoffs in effect."]

5. President [Clinton] vetoes effort to repeal taxes on estates... Clinton, echoing Gore, calls bill too costly and says it mainly helps the rich..\.. Republicans vow a fight, by Lizette Alvarez, NYT, A1.
   [Tax concentration - like huge estates. You wanna repeal taxes? Repeal taxes on circulation and economic dynamism - like those stupid and nickel&diming sales taxes (worst of which, btw = Canada's exhorbitant GST).

6. [Light-hearted relief -]
   For Amtrak's new train, a high-speed cameo, by Raphael Lewis, Boston Globe, B1.
   [Photo caption -] The Acela Express, which eventually will travel between [downtown] Boston and [downtown] New York in about 3 hours 10 minutes, [slipped silently to a stop on Track 7 and] stopped briefly at South Station yesterday.
   [We loooove trains.]

7. [Fabulous op ed today -]
   Holy politicians with unholy alliances, by Derrick Jackson, Boston Globe, A19.
   Gabriel!
   Yes boss?!?
   Step into my den. We've got a problem.... Two of these four men are going to run America. They're all taking my name in, well, if it's not in vain, it's the wrong vein....
   What's wrong with that, boss? Wouldn't we want a man of faith to lead the country instead of Jesse Ventura?
   Haven't I gotten this through your head after 14 billion years, Gabe? There's a thin line between faith and fad.
   Wait a minute boss, are you saying they're fakes?...
   You see Gabe, these guys talk a good game about God, but frankly, they sometimes behave more like Jim and Tammy Baker and Reverend Ike. Over here, you have Bush born wealthy, born with connections, then talking about how he pulled himself up by his bootstraps. Then instead of spending his own money, he passed the offering plate to get the middle class and the poor to build a new baseball stadium that increased his holdings in the Texas Rangers. That's not my idea of tithing. Over here you have Lieberman, who says the U.S. is "the most religious country in the world," yet sometimes he has two gods, me and G-ood O-ld D-ollars. He takes all kinds of campaign contributions from people who gouge and even hurt the middle class and poor. He never met a pharmaceutical maker, insurance company, or defense contractor he didn't like....
   [Great vaudeville!]