rigged

Don’t Blame Robots for Low Wages

So technological change is an old story. What’s new is the failure of workers to share in the fruits of that technological change.

I’m not saying that coping with change was ever easy. The decline of coal employment had devastating effects on many families, and much of what used to be coal country has never recovered. The loss of manual jobs in port cities surely contributed to the urban social crisisof the ’70s and ’80s.

But while there have always been some victims of technological progress, until the 1970s rising productivity translated into rising wages for a great majority of workers. Then the connection was broken. And it wasn’t the robots that did it.

What did? There is a growing though incomplete consensus among economists that a key factor in wage stagnation has been workers’ declining bargaining power — a decline whose roots are ultimately political.

Most obviously, the federal minimum wage, adjusted for inflation, has fallen by a third over the past half century, even as worker productivity has risen 150 percent. That divergence was politics, pure and simple.

The decline of unions, which covered a quarter of private-sector workers in 1973 but only 6 percent now, may not be as obviously political. But other countries haven’t seen the same kind of decline. Canada is as unionized now as the U.S. was in 1973; in the Nordic nations unions cover two-thirds of the work force. What made America exceptional was a political environment deeply hostile to labor organizing and friendly toward union-busting employers.

And the decline of unions has made a huge difference. Consider the case of trucking, which used to be a good job but now pays a third less than it did in the 1970s, with terrible working conditions. What made the difference? De-unionization was a big part of the story.

.. Which brings me back to the question of why we’re talking so much about robots. The answer, I’d argue, is that it’s a diversionary tactic — a way to avoid facing up to the way our system is rigged against workers, similar to the way talk of a “skills gap” was a way to divert attention from bad policies that kept unemployment high.

And progressives, above all, shouldn’t fall for this facile fatalism. American workers can and should be getting a much better deal than they are. And to the extent that they aren’t, the fault lies not in our robots, but in our political leaders.

Michael Lewis: The Market is Rigged – Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt

April 2 (Bloomberg) — “Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt” Author Michael Lewis discusses his book, trading and the stock market on Bloomberg Television’s “Market Makers.” (Source: Bloomberg)

It is like a casino inviting a bunch of card sharks to play with a bunch of tour groups, where only the casino and the card sharks know that the 4s and Queens have been removed.

The high-frequency traders pay for order flow.

The Force of Decency Awakens

A funny thing is happening on the American scene: a powerful upwelling of decency.

.. You can see the abrupt turn toward decency in the rise of the #MeToo movement; in a matter of months ground that had seemed immovable shifted, and powerful sexual predators started facing career-ending consequences.

.. You can see it in the reactions to the Parkland school massacre.

.. Even the huge anti-Trump demonstrations just after Inauguration Day didn’t seem to move the conventional wisdom. But those pink pussy hats may have represented the beginning of real social and political change.

.. Political scientists have a term and a theory for what we’re seeing on #MeToo, guns and perhaps more: “regime change cascades.”

.. When people see the status quo as immovable, they tend to be passive even if they are themselves dissatisfied. Indeed, they may be unwilling to reveal their discontent, or to fully admit it to themselves. But once they see others visibly taking a stand, they both gain more confidence in their dissent and become more willing to act on it — and by their actions they may induce the same response in others, causing a kind of chain reaction.

.. Examples include

the revolutions that swept Europe in 1848,

the sudden collapse of communism in 1989 and

the Arab Spring of 2011.

.. nothing says that such cascades have to be positive either in their motivations or in their results. The period 2016-17 clearly represented a sort of Alt-Right Spring — springtime for fascists? — in which white supremacists and anti-Semites were emboldened

not just by Donald Trump’s election but by the

evidence that there were more like-minded people than anyone realized, both in the U.S. and Europe.

.. historians have described 1848 as a turning point where history somehow failed to turn: At the end of the day the old, corrupt regimes were still standing.

.. far too much power rests in the hands of men who are simply bad people.

.. his growing backlash is not just its vileness, but its lameness.

.. Trump’s response to Parkland — let’s arm teachers! — wasn’t just stupid, it was cowardly, an attempt to duck the issue

.. Missouri G.O.P. has responded to the indictment of Gov. Eric Greitens, accused of trying to blackmail his lover with nude photos: by blaming … George Soros

.. They’ve pretty much given up on making any substantive case for their ideas in favor of rants about socialists trying to take away your freedom.

.. it’s also kind of whiny; it’s what people sound like when they know they’re losing the argument.

.. the U.S. electoral system is in effect rigged in favor of Republicans

.. Democrats will need to win the popular vote by something like seven percentage points to take the House.

Women Say a “Rigged” System Allows Wall Street to Hide Its Sexual-Harassment Problem

There is little doubt that finance has had just as many cases of sexual predation as other industries, and perhaps more. Finance is a male-dominated industry and the few women who manage to enter it, and to climb its ranks, often become the targets of the men who work there.

.. Renée-Eva Fassbender Amochaev, a broker who successfully sued Smith Barney for gender discrimination in a subsequent case when it was part of Citigroup, told me that the way Wall Street firms resolve sexual harassment cases continues to protect perpetrators and firms. Large settlements are paid, but the men who either committed the bad behavior or who effectively condoned it, often remain. “No one gets fired,” she said. “Everyone on the inside knows the system is rigged.” And, because the settlements are confidential, the incidents are kept quiet.

.. members of her department went to Scores, a topless dance club in Manhattan, to celebrate a colleague’s promotion.

.. Managers placed all the women’s desks together, and that part of the floor was known as the “pink ghetto.” The rest of the office was decidedly more masculine. “It was a locker room,” she said. “It was horrible, but I just sucked it up for a year.”

.. Carnoy said she thought about suing Bear Stearns because what went on there was so “despicable,” but then she thought better of it. “I remember thinking, ‘Wow, I can sue them but I want to be in this industry for the next thirty years’,”

.. An executive’s annual bonus can be in the millions of dollars and if a woman experienced egregious harassment or criminal sexual assault on Wall Street, the settlement would also be in the millions.

.. Pao told me that she thought part of the reason might be because that while women had won a few legal victories—and had received cash settlements—their careers had stalled afterward.

.. the broader #MeToo moment is strengthening an “underground” movement, or whisper network, where women who work in finance help each other. “What Wall Street still underestimates is that the ‘underground’ is still alive and well and growing stronger with this new movement,” she said. “These women find me, contact me, call me—for twelve solid years now. We plot, we organize in secret and effect change through an underground, which is how you, and countless women, have found me. It’s all we have right now.