Category Archives: Random Blogging

Is the Light Finally Dawning?

An article in the February 9th issue of The New Yorker reported that Aetna, a Fortune 500 company, plans to raise the pay of its lowest-paid workers, and improve employee medical coverage. The proposed increase is substantial—from twelve dollars an hour to sixteen dollars an hour in some cases.

Mark Bertolini, Aetna’s CEO, was quoted as saying it wasn’t fair for employees of a Fortune 500 company to be struggling to make ends meet.

It isn’t only Aetna.

A recent announcement from Ford Motor Company unveiled the carmaker’s plan to raise the pay of 300 to 500 of its entry-level workers by more than $19,000 a year, or nearly 50%. The announcement was heralded as another sign of the rebound of the U.S. auto industry, but its implications go well beyond that rebound. (Henry Ford would have understood; in 1914, he famously raised his workers’ pay to the then-unheard-of rate of five dollars a day. Turnover and absenteeism plummeted, and profits and productivity rose.)

Little by little, American businesses are recognizing that their own long-term interests are inextricably bound up with the welfare of their employees. That’s a lesson retailers like Costco learned long ago. I’ve previously quoted Business Week’s telling comparison between Costco and Walmart–Costco pays hourly workers an average of 20.89 an hour to Walmart’s 12.67.

Despite paying higher wages and offering more generous benefits, Costco not only nets more per square foot than Walmart, its prices are competitive with—and sometimes better than—those of Walmart.

Early last year Consumer Reports ran a very interesting chart comparing prices for the same brand of purchases like flour, coffee, tall kitchen bags, toilet paper and similar items.  Consumers compared the costs of store brands, Costco, Walmart, various regional chains and Walgreens for each item. Store brands, unsurprisingly, were cheapest overall.

Next was Costco.

As the New Yorker article noted, there are solid business reasons to pay workers more—turnover declines, and better-paid employees tend to work harder. There is also the question of fundamental fairness. American corporations pay their executives truly obscene amounts, while wringing every dime possible out of people who can least afford to work for poverty wages. When Bertolini announced Aetna’s decision, he talked about inequality and corporate responsibility, saying “For the good of the social order, these are the kind of investments we should be willing to make.”

When Charlie Wilson was President of General Motors, during the Eisenhower Administration, he supposedly said “What’s good for General Motors is good for America.” What he actually said was “What’s good for America is good for General Motors.”

Wilson was right. Reducing inequality will be good for America, and what’s good for America is good for business.

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My, My! I Think I Hit a Sore Spot

Yesterday, I pointed to a very bipartisan problem: the under-representation of women candidates slated to run for Indianapolis City-County Council (not helped by the “dumping” by each party of an incumbent female). Several commenters–all, I should note, men–protested via twitter that gender had nothing to do with the slating decisions.

As I responded to one of them, I’m sure that’s true–consciously. Neither party deliberately slighted women candidates, or intentionally applied different standards to male and female incumbents.

The key word is “intentional.”

In 1990, Wellesley College professor Peggy McIntosh wrote an essay about White Privilege, in which she observed that whites in the U.S. are taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on any particular group.

Men also tend to be unaware of their own privileges as men. See “The Male Privilege Checklist” for a rundown of unconscious assumptions that are true for men but not women.

A few of the 45 items on that checklist are particularly relevant here:

If I seek political office, my relationship with my children, or who I hire to take care of them, will probably not be scrutinized by the press.

Chances are my elected representatives are mostly people of my own sex. The more prestigious and powerful the elected position, the more likely this is to be true.

I can be loud with no fear of being called a shrew. I can be aggressive with no fear of being called a bitch.

My post yesterday was about those “invisible systems conferring dominance” and the systemic (albeit largely unconscious) attitudes those systems foster. Most of the women who commented “got it.”  A number of the men, didn’t.

I rest my case.

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First World Problems…

Many of the issues I write about are important–at least, I think they are. Others should be filed under  First World annoyances.

This is one of those.

Many years ago, a biologist at Eastern Connecticut State University, proved a long-suspected correlation between grandparent deaths and exams.

After collecting data for 20 years, Adams concluded that a student’s grandmother was far more likely to die before midterms than at any other time of the year. More specifically, his research showed that grandmothers are 10 times more likely to die before a midterm, and 19 times more likely to die before a final exam. Grannies of students who weren’t doing well in their classes were at even higher risk of meeting their maker: Students who were failing a class were 50 times as likely as others to lose a grandmother.

Like many professors, I’ve encountered this phenomenon, and I can tell you that it’s really difficult to address. No one wants to demand that a genuinely grieving grandchild produce a death certificate, but no one wants to be “played,” either. It calls for finesse.

Recently, this coincidence of grandparental death and exam times was the subject of an article that included a survey of several instructors, who were asked how they coped with this particular dilemma. Here is my favorite–one I fully intend to adopt.

Dear Student: I’m very sorry to hear of the loss in your family. Please know you are all in my thoughts in this difficult time. I understand the importance of family in times of grief, and I hope you can be a source of support for your parents in what is one of the most difficult life transitions we all must face as we get older.

I would very much like to send your [Mom or Dad] a card and a short note to let them know they are in my thoughts and to single you out for praise in being so proactive and forthright in speaking to me. Would you be kind enough to send along [his or her] snail mail address so I can get this in the mail in the next day or so?

[H/T to Jim Brown, who posted this article on Facebook!]

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Guns and Cars and FREEDOM

Over at Juanita Jean’s, the World’s Most Dangerous Beauty Salon, I read:

Motor vehicle accidents used to be the leading cause of death in this country. But not in Missouri —

Firearms proved more deadly, and by a wide margin — 880 to 781 — according to the most recent federal data available. And Missouri appears to be a harbinger of things to come.

Some experts predict that for the first time in decades, firearms will kill more people nationwide this year than motor vehicles.

And the reason why traffic deaths have decreased dramatically?

Advocates credit seat belts, padded dashboards, airbags, highway median guard cables and road-edge rumble strips, among other things.

But God forbid that we talk about putting better safety mechanisms on guns! Because FREEDOM!

Reading this, I couldn’t help recalling a memorable interview with the late, irrepressible  Molly Ivins, during which she noted that the Texas legislature had successfully addressed a similar problem. Gun deaths in Texas had exceeded fatalities from automobile accidents. “But our lawmakers took care of that problem.” Molly reported.

“They raised the speed limit.”

We’re doomed.

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Neglect and Decline

During Bill Clinton’s campaign for President, James Carville famously insisted “It’s the Economy, Stupid,” and it is certainly true that economic conditions have a huge effect on political attitudes. What that catchy slogan misses, however, is the extent to which the economy, in turn, depends upon a country’s infrastructure.

Societies require systems—both physical and social. Those systems provide us with important, albeit largely taken-for-granted webs of support. When those systems don’t work—or when they have been corrupted or neglected so that they only work for some groups and individuals—a society fails to function as it should.

A colleague of mine once made an observation that has stayed with me: in poor, third-world countries, people are no less entrepreneurial or hard working than those who live in the developed West. The relative lack of economic activity—especially more sophisticated enterprises– can be traced to the lack of basic infrastructure.

Businesses need multiple kinds of infrastructure in order to have a chance of succeeding (beginning with enough people with the wherewithal to buy their goods—i.e. markets). Undeveloped countries lack roads, trucks and railroads to transport necessary raw materials and to ship finished goods. They often lack reliable electricity and potable water. Even more importantly, many countries can’t even provide entrepreneurs with the security and social stability businesses require, the sort of social order we take for granted.

Infrastructure is much more than roads and sewers, important as those are. Infrastructure—in its most expansive sense—includes important social supports like the rule of law. In most western democratic countries (although not in the U.S.), health care is considered part of a country’s essential social infrastructure.

Needless to say, equal access to a robust social and physical infrastructure plays a huge role in mitigating economic inequality.

Elizabeth Warren is one of the few elected officials who seems to understand the essential role played by infrastructure. As she recently reiterated,

 “people who built great businesses worked hard. Most successful entrepreneurs worked their tails off. But those businesses needed good soil to grow – and that meant they need roads and bridges to get their goods to market, dependable and affordable power grids, access to clean water and safe sewers, up-to-date communications – the kind of basic infrastructure that we build together.

Coming out of the Great Depression, we built those roads and bridges and power grids that helped businesses grow right here in America. We plowed money into our future, and as those businesses grew, they created great jobs here at home.

 But by the 1980s, our country sharply cut back on making those investments in our future, and now we’re getting left behind. Today China spends 9% of its GDP on infrastructure. Europe spends about 5% of its GDP on infrastructure. They are building a future for their businesses – and better jobs for their people. But the United States is investing only 2.4% and looking for more ways to make cuts. Today, the American Society of Civil Engineers says we have about $3.6 trillion worth of deferred maintenance, repairs and upgrading – and every day we’re falling behind.

Disinvestment is worst, of course, in the poorer precincts of our nation—in areas where it is most needed.

America’s failure to attend to our basic infrastructure is one of the most serious policy issues we face. It is maddening to watch members of Congress in both parties posture for interest groups and play petty politics while our bridges and sewers crumble, our power grid degrades, and other countries’ wireless service exceeds ours in reliability and speed.

I think it was Eric Hoffer–the longshoreman/philosopher–who said we cannot judge the greatness of a civilization by the roads and buildings it constructs, but by how well it maintains what it builds.

By that measure, we’re in decline.

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