May 16, 2017--Where's Waldo?

Flipping through the Sunday New York Times, I was struck by a dramatic photo on the first page of the business section.

It was of a Ford Motor Company "assembly line" in their new plant in Hangzhou, China. I put assembly line in quotes because my notion of an assembly line is a slowing-moving conveyer belt where cars are assembled by workers one stage at a time.

From what I could tell from the picture of the Hangzhou plant the cars being assembled were moving along but there wasn't a worker in sight.

See if you can spot one. I couldn't.

Ford Assembly Plant, Hangzhou, China

Workers are nowhere in sight.

This reminded me of Where's Waldo?, a series of children's books created by the English artist Martin Handford in which there are detailed illustrations depicting dozens of people doing a variety of amusing things. Hidden in their midst is Waldo. Though he is always wearing his distinctive red and white stripped shirt and a bobble hat with a pom-pom on top and large, Harry Potter type glasses, it is not easy to locate him.

Where's Waldo?

As our economy continues to struggle with the decades-long decline in good manufacturing jobs, and as politicians point out the off-shoring of so many jobs to sites such as Hangzhou, all the while pandering to worker fears of global unfairness--how foreign wages are artificially kept low in regrettable efforts to undermine the workings of the free market--there are in fact larger forces at work that are not as widely discussed and much more difficult to ameliorate.

Yes, many high-paying manufacturing jobs have been lost because in places such as Hangzhou the workers that are employed at the Ford assembly plant make on average only $4 an hour, more disruptive--even to the Chinese economy--is the exponential proliferation of robots.

Robotics more than low wages is what is fundamentally transforming the nature of work.

And not just manufacturing. Modern forms of automation are also altering how work is organized in corporate offices. Thus the question the world faces, as we see the global economy undergoing a paradigm shift, is what kinds of jobs will be available, even exist, by the middle of the 21st century.

To adapt we may need to experiment with different ways to help support employees, or permanently displaced workers. Guaranteeing a minimum annual income may be one such approach. This has been suggested, counter-intuitively, by some of the economically conservative members of the free-market-oriented Austrian School of Economics.

It is being tried in Canada among other places and it may also be time to begin to think this way here.

August 13, 2015--Cojones

I took a peak at the first post-debate poll numbers to see if Donald TRUMP with his bombast and misogynist comments had plummeted and if Carly Fiorina and John Kasich who, it was agreed did well, soared.

Yes and no.

Fiorina, who had been at low single digits (not enough to make the top-ten main event), is now at 6-9 percent and Kasich is at about that same level. He, though, competed at the adult table. Jeb Bush, on the other hand, is commencing his long-expected disappearing act. He's the Fred Thompson of 2016. Thompson, you may recall, was referred to as the Mummy.

Then there is TRUMP. 

I suspected we would see evidence of decline. The show is over. The jokes are getting stale. His 15 minutes or days of fame are beginning to fade.

Well, not exactly. 

He is now in the lead in Iowa while Scott Walker, the early summer leader, is beginning to slip toward well-deserved anonymity. And in New Hampshire, though Kasich is doing well, The Donald is at the head of the pack. We know about South Carolina, the site of the third key primary--TRUMP is trouncing everyone.

The Koch Brothers must be having coronary occlusions, not knowing where to invest their hundreds of millions. Or billions.

TRUMP, meanwhile, according to Bloomberg News, took his roadshow to Birch Run, just north of Detroit, where to an audience of 2,000 (he of course estimated it to be 5,000) he blasted the Ford Motor Company for building more plants in TRUMP's favorite country, Mexico.

He said, "Ford is building a $2.5 billion plant in Mexico." The crowd booed. "I'll give them a good idea. Why don't we just let the illegals drive the cars and trucks right into our country."

He shouted, "If it weren't for me, the words 'illegal immigrant' wouldn't be spoken right now. We have to build a wall."

The crowd began chanting TRUMP, TRUMP, TRUMP. He continued, "You can be a natural born citizen and not get a 10th of the benefits that illegal immigrants do."

A member of the audience said, "We need someone to say what's on their minds and to speak the truth." Even though TRUMP was not speaking the truth about benefits to undocumented immigrants. 

In comments to the press before the speech he claimed that he is "100 percent certain--mark it down" that he could convince Mexico to pay for a wall along the border because, "They're going to be happy about it because the cost of the wall is peanuts compared to the kind of money they're making" off the United States.

What he means by this is anyone's guess, but it went unchallenged by the adoring audience and, for that matter, the titillated media.  "Their leaders are much smarter and sharper and more cunning than our leaders."

About the proposed Mexican Ford plant he warned that as president, "I would say the deal is not going to be approved. I won't allow it. I want that plant in the United Staes. Prefereably here [in Michigan]." 

The crowd rose to its feet, chanting, "U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A."

"So then I have only one question--do they move the plant to the United States the same day or a day later?"

Bloomberg quoted Jim Maratta, a Vietnam veteran, sitting in the first row, wearing a VFW cap and an American flag shirt--

"We need someone with guts. I want to see him do something for jobs and get those deadbeats in Congress off their butts." He added, "I've been waiting for someone with cojones for a long time."

His wait may be over.