The Home Maintenance of Working-Class Identity After Deindustrialization [feedly]

The Home Maintenance of Working-Class Identity After Deindustrialization
https://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/2018/04/16/the-home-maintenance-of-working-class-identity-after-deindustrialization/

Five years in a St. Florian foundry, they call it Industrial Park

Then hospital maintenance and tech school just to memorize Frigidaire parts

But I got to missing your Mama and I got to missing you too

And I went back to painting for my old man and I guess that's what I'll always do

So don't try to change who you are boy, and don't try to be who you ain't

And don't let me catch you in Kendale with a bucket of wealthy-man's paint

Don't call what your wearing an outfit, don't ever say your car is broke

Don't sing with a fake British accent, don't act like your family's a joke.

"Outfit"

This song, written by Jason Isbell when he was part of the band The Drive by Truckers, creates a story from life messages that his father passed to him. More than any academic account I have read, it encapsulates the lessons that the working-class men I interviewed about the ongoing impact of deindustrialisation on male work identity in the UK taught to their sons. To 'not call what you're wearing an outfit' is a variation of the southern American working-class value 'don't get above your raising'. While in Britain there is a similar phrase, 'don't get ideas above your station', I think the American expression is more useful as it makes a direct link to family judgement, while 'station' has a more open social meaning. In his book 'Don't Get Above Your Raisin': Country Music and the Southern Working Class, Bill C. Malone suggests that this expression 'is not an injunction against wealth as such, even though riches carry the potential for corruption. Instead, it is a rebuke to pretense and snobbery, and a plea for respect for and loyalty to ones roots'.

While this song reflects a loyalty to family and background, it also expresses a father's desire for his son to not repeat his hardship or employment, as the father warns his son to not repeat his work as a house painter by saying: 'don't let me catch you in Kendale with a bucket of wealthy-man's paint'. This multifaceted narrative suggests the son should not repeat his journey but also should not forget the integrity of his working-class background. The tension of balancing individual and family identities is not new or an exclusive feature of working-class male familial relationships. However, deindustrialization made, and is still making, the negotiation of family background a more practical issue, as industries that for generations had been a staple resource for producing and reproducing working-class culture and identity have now closed or gone into rapid decline.

Shipwrights at Work, from the Kent History Forum

The generational sentiment: 'don't repeat my journey and don't forget the integrity of your working-class background' I heard from many of the fathers in my own study. These men had worked at the Chatham Royal Dockyard, a naval ship-building and maintenance yard officially established by Elizabeth I in 1567. This 400-year history meant that many workers could trace chains of their families working in this industry for hundreds of years. The dockyard closed in 1984, leaving most of its 7,000 employees having to search for new jobs, an event that inevitably created feelings of anger or despair. Twenty-seven years later, I wanted to explore the long-term effects of that closure on men who had worked in the 'dockyard', as well as on their sons and grandsons. The majority of British studies on deindustrialisation have focused on unskilled men, but I wanted to understand how deindustrialisation had affected skilled men.

When I asked 13 former Royal Dockyard skilled tradesmen and 14 of their sons and grandsons about their career choices, many said something like 'I did it to get on'. The phrase 'to get on' seemed short hand for making career decisions with an aim to achieve upward career mobility and better job security. For these men, the value of 'getting on' seemed to have a deep family history rooted in industrial society. The first generation, for example, discussed this desire for upward mobility as the reason they pursued a trade or craft apprenticeship. In fact, their parents saw a trade as offering a better and more secure job then they had been able to secure as unskilled workers. One of the men I interviewed, Francis Copper, for example, recalled telling his father he wanted to go in the navy. His parents persuaded him that this was not the best path. As his father said: 'You shouldn't do that, go in the Dockyard and do your apprenticeship and when you've got your indentures you can do what you like'. Although most sons suggested they did not passively follow their parents' advice, when the dockyard closed and they lost their jobs, the idea of 'getting on' motivated them to navigate their new jobs for the good of their family.  Jerry Naylor, another man I interviewed, discussed moving from being a network maintenance engineer into management at a national phone company: 'My second daughter being born pushed me to move up and get more money'. As parents themselves, these men also stressed the value of 'getting on' to their sons, encouraging them to go into secure white collar work instead of following them into a trade. As Francis's son Chris recalled, 'Dad thought I should go into a bank and be a manager'.

Since most of the men in my study actively pursued middle-class work for economic reasons, 'getting-on' as a value could be seen as a contradiction of 'not getting above your rising'. However, in moving into more middle-class paid work, men did not forget where they came from or lose their engagement with their background. Instead, they retained and continued their trade learning and hands-on work by developing unpaid DIY projects. For example, Darrel, a former shipwright, and his son Noel Carrin showed me the architectural drawings and the two-storey extension they had designed and built together. Similarly, Dominic Draper showed off his hand-carved bespoke wooden kitchen. These non-paid DIY projects seemed to allow men to sustain a story to their lives and a sense of integrity with their skilled working-class backgrounds. As Chris Copper reflected, 'We've always been a hands-on, practical people. If I didn't know how to do it, I'd ask dad'. Like Ben Steel, a former boiler maker, most men could not abide 'getting a man in to fix something'. Therefore, in spite of what these men now did to earn a living, they still defined themselves as 'practical people', not above or removed from the virtue of their backgrounds. Like Jason Isbell's father, these men were disciples of the philosophy 'don't ever say your car is broke'. DIY both allowed these men to continue their hands-on trade labour and was a powerful illustration of their commitment to male working-class identity.

Much like Isbell, the men in my study were encouraged to move away from working-class occupations. Moreover, due to the deindustrialization process, dockyard trade work ceased to be an option for them. We might assume that this would cause them to lose their engagement with their background and loyalty to working-class values. However, as these men navigated change, they consistently sought to embed these values in their family history. Collaborative domestic repair projects anchored their personal story in their manual trade backgrounds. These projects provided a practical demonstration that, although they had moved away from working-class employment, they had not "got above their rising" (or upbringing as we say in England). So even those who went into careers such as social work or school teaching saw these new spheres of work as relevant to their occupational or family background. These projects also allow them to transmit the value of working-class trade work to their own children, a practical manifestation of 'don't act like your family's a joke'.

George Karl Ackers

George Karl Ackers is a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Portsmouth. His research centres on the sociology of deindustrialisation. To read more about this project, see "Rethinking deindustrialisation and male career crisis", British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, 2014.

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Rethinking the Twenty-First-Century Economy [feedly]

Rethinking the Twenty-First-Century Economy
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/taxing-value-in-the-digital-economy-by-margareta-drzeniek-hanouz-2018-04

With the rise of digital technologies and big data, the global economy is undergoing a fundamental transformation that poses significant challenges to governments and policymakers. Unless tools are developed to measure new sources of value in the real economy, current and future generations' wellbeing will be in jeopardy.

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Branko Milanovic: When Autarky becomes the Only Solution [feedly]

When Autarky becomes the Only Solution

https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/16/04/2018/when-autarky-becomes-only-solution

The latest, and by far the most serious, round of US sanctions against Russia has shown two things very clearly—neither of which has received much publicity in the comments so far. The first is the extraordinary power of the modern state. The second is that when powerful states impose sanctions that limit one's access to markets, technology and capital, the only remaining option turns out to be autarky.

I will discuss the two points in turn.

Despite all the talk about the waning power of the state and the rising power of "foot-loose" large corporations what the sanctions do show is that the state is still the most powerful actor in contemporary global capitalism. Apple or Amazon could not impose sanctions and destroy Russia. Actually, no company in the world —even those who are Russia's major customers—could not destroy it. But a state can. Putin showed the power of the Russian state, at the time when it seemed weak and insignificant, when he overnight imprisoned Khodorkovsky, the richest man in Russia, and despoiled him of Yukos. Trump, or rather US treasury, shows the power of US state in destroying overnight the largest aluminum producer in the world

The second lesson is, to a large degree, for Russia the replay of the 1920s. It is today often wrongly asserted that the USSR chose a policy of economic autarky. On the contrary, all the 1920s, as soon as War Communism and foreign intervention ended, was spent by Russia in pursuit of foreign capital with which to rebuild its destroyed industry, and optimistically, to catch up with the West. But that capital was not forthcoming. The Western powers refused to recognize the Soviet government, and since the Soviets repudiated previous debt of the Tsarist Russia, their access to capital markets was shut both because of default on the debt and because of ideological reasons.

This created the situation in which Soviet development had to be conducted entirely based on domestic accumulation and technology. As is well known, the implications of that was first seized by Trotsky and Preobrazhensky:  it meant comprehensive planning  of the economy and extraction of the surplus from the only segment of the population that could generate it: the Soviet peasantry. Soviet industrialization thus took place on the "blood and toil" of Soviet (which essentially meant Ukrainian) peasantry. This policy, which by definition included collectivization, was then, beginning with the First Five-Year plan in 1928 conducted with characteristic brutality by Stalin. 

What current sanctions, and those that may yet come (as for example on Gazprom), show is that Russia is now at the same crossroads at which it was in the early 1920s. Its access to Western markets, technology and capital is all but cut off.  It is true that there are nowadays other sources for all three, including in China. But the breadth of sanctions is such that Chinese actors, if they themselves plan to do business or raise money in the United States, will too avoid doing business with Russian entities. So Russian industry will be left to grow, if it can, using only domestic resources, which compared to global resources, are small and inadequate (given how Russia's relative economic and population role in the world has declined). Autarky is thus preordained.

The questions is then whether such an economic choice will also entail, as it did in the 1920s, dictatorial domestic politics. This is quite possible because autarkic developments are hard to implement if there is no corresponding political pressure. Moreover, there would be for sure attempts from those who are affected by sanctions and all those who need access to global markets to reverse the policies that have led to the sanctions. Such attempts make them become direct political foes of the current government. The logic of political repression then becomes inescapable.

It would be wrong however to believe that the current impasse in which Russia finds itself can be overcome through different policies. It could have been done several years ago, but no longer. The reasons listed in the imposition of sanctions that cover everything from the annexation of Crimea to fake news are so comprehensive that no new post-Putin government of any conceivable kind can accept them all. They can be accepted only by a totally defeated country. In addition, US sanctions are notoriously difficult to overturn. The US sanctions against the Soviet Union started in 1948 and were practically never discontinued. The Jackson-Vanik amendment that linked trade to the freedom of Jewish emigration was on the books from 1974 until 2012, i.e. lasted more than a quarter century after the ostensible reason for its imposition ended. And it was repealed only to be replaced by another set of sanctions contained in the Magnitsky Act. The sanctions against Iran have been on, and despite the recent talk of their loosening, for almost 40 years. The sanctions on Cuba have lasted, and many still do, for more than half-century.  

Putin has thus, through a series of tactical successes, brought to Russia a comprehensive strategic defeat from which neither him, nor the governments that succeed him, will be able to extricate the country. There is moreover no ideology, short of extreme nationalism, on which the autarkic system can be built. Bolsheviks in the 1920s had an ideology which led them ultimately to accept autarky and to work within it. Such an ideology does not exist in today's capitalist Russia. Yet the industrialization debate of the 1920 may again become indispensable literature for economic policy-making.

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The Facebook Trials: It’s Not “Our” Data [feedly]

This is mostly a bullshit article, but only because a LOT of economists don't know what to do with phenomena that don't really have very much ECONOMICS.

The data, like IDEAS, or even reproducible art, is a LOUSY commodity. In general, no matter the efforts to maintain privacy, data is a quasi public good. When you post on facebook, you are giving your conversation to the world without charge. Even if you put up a software gate, anyone inside the gate, and skilled hackers outside, can copy it virtually for free.

The business model of Google and FAcebook, indeed any web services organization, is existentially enhanced by profiling its users. That's reality. On the other hand they have an incentive to TRY and protect conversations from EXTERNAL intrusion, since that would tend to lose users. But neither incentive can change the inherent nature of information -- it quickly either disappears altogether, or returns as a public good.  There is not much "economics" theory of public goods beyond identifying them.

The Facebook Trials: It's Not "Our" Data
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/04/facebook-trials-not-data.html

Facebook, Google and other tech companies are accused of stealing our data or at least of using it without our permission to become extraordinarily rich. Now is the time, say the critics, to stand up and take back our data. Ours, ours, ours.

In this way of thinking, our data is like our lawnmower and Facebook is a pushy neighbor who saw that our garage door was open, took our lawnmower, made a quick buck mowing people's lawns, and now refuses to give our lawnmower back. Take back our lawnmower!

The reality is far different.

What could be more ours than our friends? Yet I have hundreds of friends on Facebook, most of whom I don't know well and have never met. But my Facebook friends are friends. We share common interests and, most of the time, I'm happy to see what they are thinking and doing and I'm pleased when they show interest in what I'm up to. If, before Facebook existed, I had been asked to list "my friends," I would have had a hard time naming ten friends, let alone hundreds. My Facebook friends didn't exist before Facebook. My Facebook friendships are not simply my data—they are a unique co-creation of myself, my friends, and, yes, Facebook.

Some of my Facebook friends are family, but even here the relationships are not simply mine but a product of myself and Facebook. My cousin who lives in Dubai, for example, is my cousin whether Facebook exists or not, but I haven't seen him in over twenty years, have never written him a letter, have never in that time shared a phone call. Nevertheless, I can tell you about the bike accident, the broken arm, the X-ray with more than a dozen screws—I know about all of this only because of Facebook. The relationship with my cousin, therefore, isn't simply mine, it's a joint creation of myself, my cousin and Facebook.

Facebook hasn't taken our data—they have created it.

Facebook and Google have made billions in profits, but it's utterly false to think that we, the users, have not been compensated. Have you checked the price of a Facebook post or a Google search recently? More than 2 billion people use Facebook every month, none are charged. Google performs more than 3.5 billion searches every day, all for free. The total surplus created by Facebook and Google far exceeds their profits.

Moreover, it's the prospect of profits that has led Facebook and Google to invest in the technology and tools that have created "our data." The more difficult it is to profit from data, the less data there will be. Proposals to require data to be "portable" miss this important point. Try making your Facebook graph portable before joining Facebook.

None of this means that we should not be concerned with how data, ours, theirs, or otherwise, is used. I don't worry too much about what Facebook and Google know about me. Mostly the tech companies want to figure out what I want to buy. Not such a bad deal even if the way that ads follow me around the world is at times a bit disconcerting. I do worry that they have not adequately enforced contractual restrictions on third-party users of our data. Ironically, it was letting non-profits use Facebook's data that caused problems.

I also worry about big brother's use of big data. Sooner or later, what Facebook and Google know, the government will know. That alone is good reason to think carefully about how much information we allow the tech companies to know and to store. But let's get over the idea that it's "our data." Not only isn't it our data, it never was.

The post The Facebook Trials: It's Not "Our" Data appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

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Three pieces on why work requirements won’t work [feedly]

Three pieces on why work requirements won't work
http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/three-pieces-on-why-work-requirements-wont-work/

The Trump admin and their allies in Congress are trying to add work requirements to anti-poverty programs. A number of excellent sources explain why this won't work, where "work" means help poor adults move closer to self-sufficiency. Of course, if the goal is to simply kick people of the rolls, which for some legislators, I'm certain is the case…well, then I guess it could work.

First, this efficient WaPo editorial gives you the facts and the numbers behind why this pursuit of work requirements is folly, either in terms of budgetary savings or improving the poor's living standards.

Next, for a deep dive into the issue, this testimony by the Urban Institute's Heather Hahn is one-stop-shopping for granular evidence, down to the level of caseworkers, as to why work requirements are so ill-advised.

Finally, there's my piece on this in WaPo this AM, which gets into the fact that we've got better evidence than every before (see Hahn's piece, along with the links to my CBPP colleagues) that, in fact, able-bodied poor people already work. Given the nature of the stressors and labor market barriers they face, their connection to the job market often needs to be strengthened, but work requirements likely will, as Hahn shows, have the opposite effect.

My broader point is: Despite some of the best evidence we've ever had showing that neither trickle-down tax cuts nor work requirements will work, conservatives continue trying to solve the problem that the poor have too much and the rich have too little.

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Artificial intelligence and the new atheism [feedly]

Artificial intelligence and the new atheism
https://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-edit-page/artificial-intelligence-and-the-new-atheism/

Artificial intelligence and the new atheism

April 16, 2018, 2:00 AM IST Speaking Tree in TOI Edit Page | Edit Page, Spirituality, World | TOI

By Jug Suraiya

Elon Musk, the driving force behind Tesla, the world's first driverless motor vehicle, is among the growing number of people who are warning us about the increasing dominance which artificial intelligence (AI), is exercising over our lives in the form of computers, robots and other devices.

Musk has said that in AI we have created more than a mere Frankenstein's monster: we have created an entity which will become an "immortal dictator" and enslave all humankind in perpetuity.

Human dictators are mortal and eventually die, liberating their subjects from oppression. But AI will be a deathless dictator from whom we can never hope to free ourselves.

In its various forms, AI already runs much of our daily lives. Time-controlled electronic appliances automatically turn our climate-control systems on and off, similarly programmed kitchen ranges cook our meals for us.

Computers can beat grandmasters at chess, can compose poetry and music and conduct conversations with us which are indistinguishable from those we would have with another human being.

In his book, '2001: A Space Odyssey', which was turned into a film, Arthur C Clarke wrote about HAL, a supercomputer which is programmed to operate a manned space mission and which turns 'rogue', endangering the lives of the spaceship's crew.

HAL had to have its memory banks disabled one by one by a computer engineer to prevent it from further mischief. But HAL's descendants have gone far beyond such human intervention.

The real watershed in the realm of AI came when computers learnt to devise new programmes for themselves without human input: they learnt to think for themselves – they gained 'self-consciousness'.

Self-consciousness implies self-determination. Our thinking machines no longer need us to tell them what to do; they will tell us what to do, or so people like Musk argue.

Such fears of our creating an "immortal dictator" have a ring of deja vu; we have been here before. The earliest humans, observing the forces of nature at work, created an AI which was responsible for all phenomena. In time, this AI came to be known by the generic name of God.

Humans created gods in their own image. In all mythologies, the early gods are like us: vengeful, covetous and jealous. Often, they cohabit with humans, and produce demigods, beings half divine and half human, like the androids being developed today.

In time, all these gods consolidated into a centralised power centre we call God, though by different names.

This God, however called, rules our lives like a not-always-benevolent, immortal dictator. In the name of God, we continue to fight wars and kill each other, as though commanded to do so by a Creator who is nothing but our creation, just as AI is.

Having created our first immortal dictator, some humans who call themselves atheists, rebelled against God and, like Milton's Lucifer, arraigned themselves in 'dubious battle' against Heaven.

Today, as religious fundamentalism of all shades gains ground, so does a counter movement of radical atheism and rationalism as represented by scientists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris.

Humankind, it seems, is condemned to create its Creators – be it God or AI – and then seek to challenge and refute their own creation. If this indeed is so, Elon Musk and others like him could represent the face of the new atheism. (Read tomorrow: 'Is God A Spiritual Liability?')

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Is Foreign Trade the Cause of Manufacturing Job Losses? [feedly]

Is Foreign Trade the Cause of Manufacturing Job Losses?
https://www.urban.org/research/publication/foreign-trade-cause-manufacturing-job-losses

This brief, the second in a series on manufacturing's role in the US economy, shows the difference between the gross and net effects of trade on manufacturing employment. I analyze the economics of trade and how it affects domestic employment, trade and employment trends across manufacturing industries in three periods, and how many manufacturing jobs the US would have if we had no trade deficit. I find that the net effect of the US trade deficit accounts for only a small decline in US manufacturing employment and that changing trade agreements will not restore manufacturing to its past prominence.

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