Taxes, anyone?

[John Camp]

I think the main reason that (average) real incomes haven't increased much is because of the decline of the unionized industrial/manufacturing economy here, and the rise of the non-unionized service economy. Almost all heavily unionized fields, outside government (teachers and others) have declined.

[Alan Klein]

I think that's an exaggeration. They play a part but I don't believe they were the main reasons.

What are?

[Alan Klein]

I think the main reason that (average) real incomes haven't increased much is because of the decline of the unionized industrial/manufacturing economy here, and the rise of the non-unionized service economy. Almost all heavily unionized fields, outside government (teachers and others) have declined.

Isn't that what Trump claims is the problem as well? That all our manufacturing jobs have gone to China and other countries?

On the other hand lower prices because labor is cheaper overseas have given us products that we couldn't afford to make so cheap over here such as TVs cars electronics cameras Etc.  That improves our purchasing power.

[Rob C]

I think the main reason that (average) real incomes haven't increased much is because of the decline of the unionized industrial/manufacturing economy here, and the rise of the non-unionized service economy. Almost all heavily unionized fields, outside government (teachers and others) have declined.

Indeed, and what can a teacher do if the unions that represent those teachers are unable to secure higher salaries? There's not a whole host of alternatives for a teacher who wants to quit.

As for any photographers left in the industry - what do they do when gigs refuse to pay the once going rate? And as the gigs themselves vanish, it becomes even more difficult to survive. For all the various causes already discussed to death, it has turned into a race to the bottom.

I really think this will spread to all the professions apart from, perhaps, medicine. Even law will be simplified into the ticking of boxes, with the resulting blunt instument being the the only available answer to every dispute.

This may sound a bit OTT, but I'm not so sure. As I have made no new pictures for a while, I have not a lot to do with time other than listen to music and surf for interesting interviews. When my imagination runs dry and I can't think of one more photographer whose work I want to investigate anew, I switch on tv. Looking at that for a couple of hours is alarmingly depressing - of the BBC's offerings, only BBC4 seems to give me anything I might want to watch. The other channels are mind-bending drivel. Breakfast news has turned into a chat show for the kiddies. I sometimes run through everything the remote can click into life, and if that's what the world is looking forward to watching in its free time, there is little hope left for mankind, and every reason to think that humanity is racing towards a new serfdom, if not its own erasure.

You know, they - whoever "they" are - say one should never look back, only ahead. I disagree: only by looking in the mirror can one see what's been tossed aside in favour of false improvement. Just think of the High Street in your small town, and the hive of activity that is was during past decades. Of course, this only works if you were around in those lost decades; if not, you may imagine it was always as it is today: chartity shops; closed shops; betting shops and the surviving pub.

Rob

[Robert Roaldi]

Isn't that what Trump claims is the problem as well? That all our manufacturing jobs have gone to China and other countries?

On the other hand lower prices because labor is cheaper overseas have given us products that we couldn't afford to make so cheap over here such as TVs cars electronics cameras Etc.  That improves our purchasing power.

I thought you believed in the free market.

Besides which, it's only the low-level grunt manufacturing jobs that have disappeared from what used to be called the developed world (a term that's no longer valid but people don't want to admit it). The US still manufactures a lot; according to Wiki it's still second in the world after China in manufacturing output, although it's hard to know what and how exactly that's measured. This is such an odd situation because it used to be considered a good thing to get rid of lousy jobs. In some countries, it is considered to be part of a government's function to think about how that affects the population and to think about ways to minimize the general pain. But if the government is not neutral, and acts as if it's the marketing arm of Amazon, then worrying about the fate of its citizens is not so important.

[Alan Klein]

I thought you believed in the free market.

Besides which, it's only the low-level grunt manufacturing jobs that have disappeared from what used to be called the developed world (a term that's no longer valid but people don't want to admit it). The US still manufactures a lot; according to Wiki it's still second in the world after China in manufacturing output, although it's hard to know what and how exactly that's measured. This is such an odd situation because it used to be considered a good thing to get rid of lousy jobs. In some countries, it is considered to be part of a government's function to think about how that affects the population and to think about ways to minimize the general pain. But if the government is not neutral, and acts as if it's the marketing arm of Amazon, then worrying about the fate of its citizens is not so important.

I do believe in a free market. But not theft.  When China steals trade secrets, patents and intellectual property, including our photos, and goes into business with that info without paying for it, that's not a "free" market.  No one should be "free" to steal stuff.  And it's not just the "grunt" manufacturing.  High level electronics, chips, autos, aircraft, you name it.  At a value of $400-500 billion a year.  That's an amount equal to our entire imports from China annually.  And that's just from America.  They steal from you too.  If Trump is able to get them to stop, an unlikely situation so dependent they are on it, the whole world would benefit including you.  You should be cheering on Trump.  There's a lot at stake for all of us. 

[John Camp]

Indeed, and what can a teacher do if the unions that represent those teachers are unable to secure higher salaries? There's not a whole host of alternatives for a teacher who wants to quit.

As for any photographers left in the industry - what do they do when gigs refuse to pay the once going rate? And as the gigs themselves vanish, it becomes even more difficult to survive. For all the various causes already discussed to death, it has turned into a race to the bottom.

I really think this will spread to all the professions apart from, perhaps, medicine. Even law will be simplified into the ticking of boxes, with the resulting blunt instument being the the only available answer to every dispute.

This may sound a bit OTT, but I'm not so sure. As I have made no new pictures for a while, I have not a lot to do with time other than listen to music and surf for interesting interviews. When my imagination runs dry and I can't think of one more photographer whose work I want to investigate anew, I switch on tv. Looking at that for a couple of hours is alarmingly depressing - of the BBC's offerings, only BBC4 seems to give me anything I might want to watch. The other channels are mind-bending drivel. Breakfast news has turned into a chat show for the kiddies. I sometimes run through everything the remote can click into life, and if that's what the world is looking forward to watching in its free time, there is little hope left for mankind, and every reason to think that humanity is racing towards a new serfdom, if not its own erasure.

You know, they - whoever "they" are - say one should never look back, only ahead. I disagree: only by looking in the mirror can one see what's been tossed aside in favour of false improvement. Just think of the High Street in your small town, and the hive of activity that is was during past decades. Of course, this only works if you were around in those lost decades; if not, you may imagine it was always as it is today: chartity shops; closed shops; betting shops and the surviving pub.

Rob

Two things:

1. Teachers (in the US) belong to powerful unions which have shown a willingness to strike, no matter what happens to the children; and they are huge money-raising machines and vote-producing machines for the politicians who (guess what) decide on teacher's salaries and benefits. Iowa, the first of the states to indicate a preference for Presidential candidates, is a caucus state, rather than a primary/voting state, where people get together in caucuses to decide who they want as a candidate. Guess which group has the organizational strength and time to dominate these caucuses? And they do, which is why Elizabeth Warren is running so far out in front in Iowa. In many small towns in the US, a married couple who are both teachers are often among the most affluent people in town, with decent salaries for both, plus almost unparalleled benefits. In addition, American teachers work an average of about 180-190 days a year, while the average worker in other fields puts in 245 or so. Most public school teachers have the entire summer off. My family happens to be full of teachers, and I often looked upon them with envy, as I put in another sixty-hour week. The whole Elizabeth Warren boomlet pretty much relies on teacher support, because teachers ask, essentially, "Why shouldn't everybody have what we do? Wouldn't that be fair?" You'd have to answer that question on your own. :-)

2. Medicine is being caught in the same race to the bottom. It's not the job it was in the glory days of the 60s-90s. I think more and more people are coming to believe that computers are actually a curse. Ask yourself this: half the population (conventionally, if not actually) has IQs lower than 100. What are they supposed to do? At one time, there was honorable work for people who were not smart, or somehow different. Now, not so much. I know a woman (a teacher, in fact) who decided she didn't want to pay a lawyer for her mutually-consented divorce. She downloaded some forms, she and her husband filled them out, and shazam, they were divorced (in California) untouched by lawyerly hands. So even the professions are being snuck up upon.

[Rob C]

Teaching. My daughter and her hubby are both teachers; I think they would be green with envy to read what you have written here! As far as I can tell without prying, life continues to be reasonably comfortable, yet still a struggle against the odds. I have no real idea what they take home, but the last figure I remember being bandied about in the news was something around twenty-six grand (pounds) p.a. for the average grade, which would make me very happy indeed in my retirement, but then I wouldn't be prepared to do the work, even if I could.

Yes, the holidays are long, but then the working week is not as the week of somebody who clocks off at five; many nights are sewn up with preparatory work for the following day, marking etc. in much the same way as was my own life, where many nights were spent printing and getting out the stuff I'd shot earlier as, indeed, were some weekends. But doing it for your own business makes it feel very different. Self-employment makes many things feel different, as you know; some of the hardships are accepted as measure of your own ability to catch the gigs, so they come with a built-in anaesthetic to reality. Self-employment and self-deception are often close cousins. Living alone, or with a very understanding spouse, is de rigueur!

But the highs are something special.

Rob

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Teachers... the amount of sh*t they are enduring from students and parents these days, let alone school administration always fearful of the next lawsuit, is not worth even twice their salaries.

[John Camp]

Teachers... the amount of sh*t they are enduring from students and parents these days, let alone school administration always fearful of the next lawsuit, is not worth even twice their salaries.

Teachers do get abused, in a *few* places. Most don't have to endure anything like what is represented by those cartoons. My brother-in-law was a basketball coach until fairly recently, and if he caught somebody on the team using an obscenity (which would be a pretty mild social violation) he would carefully explain that a few such words, in an appropriate context, probably wouldn't hurt anyone, but a school wasn't appropriate -- and he'd give them detention. With full support of the school board. The horror stories you see in the news are just that -- horror stories. Some schools have gone decades without a horror story. Not talking about Chicago, of course.

Edit: I was a news reporter for half of my life, but one of the things that discourages me most about the media is the frequent suggestion that horror stories are the common story -- that if you have an insane principal somewhere who is abusing children, then this is what school is like -- even though there are tens of thousands of schools where children aren't abused by the principal. We have stories like "Our failing schools" when most schools are doing quite well, thank you, and kids are learning stuff and the girls aren't getting knocked up all the time and sending porno shots of themselves to the other kids, etc. Probably the worst thing the media does is characterize "black people" as if they all live in ghettoes where they're daily abused by white people. That does a terrible disservice to blacks -- the current black unemployment rate in the US is 5.5%, but would you know that if you watched TV news programs? Or listened to nothing but hip-hop music? Ninety percent of black people aren't much different in their life styles and aspirations than 90% of white people, but that's nothing you'd learn from our media, liberal and conservative alike. Surveys have shown that when fearful whites are asked what scares them, it's strangers, usually black strangers, doing violence to them, and this is true even in states like North Dakota, where blacks are about as common fried okra.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... one of the things that discourages me most about the media is the frequent suggestion that horror stories are the common story...

John, I agree with your post above. It is otherwise known as availability bias, i.e., just because those news are more readily available (and bad news is the news, good news isn't), people tend to assume it is the norm or at least give it a bigger weighting than it deserves.

[Alan Goldhammer]

I do believe in a free market. But not theft.  When China steals trade secrets, patents and intellectual property, including our photos, and goes into business with that info without paying for it, that's not a "free" market.  No one should be "free" to steal stuff.  And it's not just the "grunt" manufacturing.  High level electronics, chips, autos, aircraft, you name it.  At a value of $400-500 billion a year.  That's an amount equal to our entire imports from China annually.  And that's just from America.  They steal from you too.  If Trump is able to get them to stop, an unlikely situation so dependent they are on it, the whole world would benefit including you.  You should be cheering on Trump.  There's a lot at stake for all of us.

Remember that IBM sold its PC business to a Chinese manufacturer and that many US computer hardware companies manufacture over in China.  Nobody forced them to do this.  China do make computer chips but US based companies still dominate the high end processor chips.  China may be manufacturing some cars and some of these are done by US companies but I don't think they are being exported to the US.  Is there a Chinese aircraft industry?  For commercial aircraft, Boeing and Airbus are the two leaders followed by Bombadier who make small regional jets.

[LesPalenik]

Remember that IBM sold its PC business to a Chinese manufacturer and that many US computer hardware companies manufacture over in China.  Nobody forced them to do this.  China do make computer chips but US based companies still dominate the high end processor chips.  China may be manufacturing some cars and some of these are done by US companies but I don't think they are being exported to the US.  Is there a Chinese aircraft industry?  For commercial aircraft, Boeing and Airbus are the two leaders followed by Bombadier who make small regional jets.

China's ambition is to get into airplane manufacturing in the next few years.

China is expected to overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest aviation market by 2022. Boeing has predicted that China will need to buy 7,000 more planes worth $1.1 trillion by 2036. While Boeing and Airbus jostle to supply those planes, China has also been trying to build its own models, the latest of which is the Comac C919.

Though China’s leadership has stopped talking about the “Made in China 2025” industrial development plan, one of its targets was to supply more than 10% of the domestic market with Chinese planes by 2025.

https://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-china-boeing-aviation-20190327-story.html

[Alan Klein]

Remember that IBM sold its PC business to a Chinese manufacturer and that many US computer hardware companies manufacture over in China.  Nobody forced them to do this.  China do make computer chips but US based companies still dominate the high end processor chips.  China may be manufacturing some cars and some of these are done by US companies but I don't think they are being exported to the US.  Is there a Chinese aircraft industry?  For commercial aircraft, Boeing and Airbus are the two leaders followed by Bombadier who make small regional jets.

I believe you're too nonchalant about this. The DoD is concerned that they have jumped over us in military technology in many areas.  Getting a jump on technology by stealing it and then developing industries to compete militarily and commercially is a big problem. Leaving aside security concerns, they destroy American and other countries' industries through this process.  If you were a commercial photographer, would you want them to steal your photos and use them without compensation?  I don;t understand why you would support their practices?  No one is suggesting they shouldn't compete legitimately.  I welcome that.  It's the stealing and other predatory practices that we shouldn't put up with. 

[Alan Goldhammer]

I believe you're too nonchalant about this. The DoD is concerned that they have jumped over us in military technology in many areas.  Getting a jump on technology by stealing it and then developing industries to compete militarily and commercially is a big problem. Leaving aside security concerns, they destroy American and other countries' industries through this process.  If you were a commercial photographer, would you want them to steal your photos and use them without compensation?  I don;t understand why you would support their practices?  No one is suggesting they shouldn't compete legitimately.  I welcome that.  It's the stealing and other predatory practices that we shouldn't put up with.

Manufactured good that require high labor inputs naturally migrate to the region with the lowest cost.  America lost the textile, clothing, shoe, and lots of other industries over the last 30-40 years.  Furniture, except for local niche manufacturers, is all but gone from this country (great book to read about the battle with China on this topic is Beth Macy's "Factory Man" that chronicles one of the Bassett brother's fight to get unfavored trade status against China for being ripped off).  There is question that China is doing some bad stuff but US companies are never going to ignore the largest consumer market in the world.  It is a difficult dynamic for the US government to address.

Maybe China does get into the aircraft business but this is not an easy task as it is highly regulated.  Because of the recent Boeing mishap it is likely to become even more regulated.  China may be able to build aircraft to their own standards for domestic use but international certification is much more difficult.  China is not showing much innovation in the semi-conductor industry with Qualcomm, Intel, and AMD doing the major innovation in operating chips.  Most other designed computer stuff is done here in the US, Japan or Taiwan.  China remains a low cost assembler of computer products but as of now not a major innovator.  Consider high quality photo printers:  2 Japanese and 1 US company.

[Alan Klein]

They steal designs and then compete.   

[Alan Goldhammer]

They steal designs and then compete.

It's a complicated story and if you read the book I noted above you will see how difficult it is to prove this.  Bassett little help from the other furniture companies as they had outsourced production whereas Bassett's company did not.

[Alan Klein]

What's interesting is that their stealing in a way hurts them.   They are always one step behind the real innovators because they're busy copying.  I'd they stopped copying, they'd breakout with new concepts and design like the Japanese.   They seem to be moving in that direction.

[faberryman]

They are always one step behind the real innovators because they're busy copying.  I'd they stopped copying, they'd breakout with new concepts and design like the Japanese.

This assumes they can't do two things at once, a rather dubious proposition and example of shallow thinking.

[Alan Klein]

This assumes they can't do two things at once, a rather dubious proposition and example of shallow thinking.

Maybe I should blow my brains out.