Once again, the Clinton message for the economy is to rely on entrepreneurs and innovation. It’s high minded stuff and sounds grandiose. A few days ago, Secretary Clinton announced support for student debt deferral for startup founders. Like her husband Bill who said “In the new economy, information, education, and motivation are everything.”, Hillary is promoting this same “new economy”. This new economy is great for the few entrepreneurs like Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp who founded Uber, but what about the Uber drivers who typically make less that $35,000 a year and no benefits? Of course, the revolving door of the .1%, the government, continues as David Plouffe is now a a full-time strategic adviser for the Uber. Prior to this, you might recall that Mr. Plouffe was campaign manager for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and a long-time Democratic Party campaign consultant.
Innovation creates Jobs! Let’s foster Innovation! That seems to sum up the Clinton massage.
But wait, hurricanes create jobs. When a hurricane hits the eastern seaboard, it creates jobs for carpenters, roofers, doctors, nurses, morticians, and so much more.
Uber created jobs, jobs that pay $35,000 a year without benefits.
John H. Schnatter used innovation in the pizza business to create thousands of jobs, many of which pay a yearly income of $20,000 and no benefits.
Clearly, innovation with high tech companies like Uber or as low tech as pizza create jobs, thousands of jobs and can make a few people very filthy rich.
So spare us the “talking points” that innovation is the real cure for the stagnant economy of the American laborer.
There is hope, however. Perhaps someone in the inner circle of the Clinton camp will offer this suggestion: How about encouraging entrepreneurs and innovators who,instead of trying to build a better mousetrap, develop ways to make life better for the mousetrap builders? How about offering tax incentives for companies that offer profit sharing? The good news is that this is already on the Clinton plan. I only wish she would speak out about it more and louder and expand on it.
We need to look at innovations that help society, lower poverty, reduce crime, improve health care, not just innovations that create apps on phones to order a $8.00 pizza with free wings.
Like the man said
‘I Can’t Eat an iPad’
I have to say, the blue collar jobs you long for are not where America’s advantage is. Part of me wants to say yes, let the developing world work with their hands while we focus on the brains.
Not to mention it misses the point entirely. It’s not about working with hands or brains, it’s not making disparaging comments about either, but you seem fine with “those people” who are not as bright as you and I. Your sentiments seem to say “too bad, you’re not smart enough” to be treated with compassion and dignity, “you work with your hands, poor bastard”.
It’s about morality, about empathy, about realizing that all jobs, all people have value and ought to be treated fairly, that the USA needs to be egalitarian, not just a source of labor for high IQ entrepreneurs.
Let’s focus on our hearts, not our brains.
…you did an awfully fine job of erecting one yourself there. I did not make any disparaging comments about anyone, or suggest that one form of work was less valuable or necessary. I just meant that we should play to our strengths. Hearts and brains aren’t mutually exclusive, and for those jobs that remain here in any sector I favor a living wage, opportunities for advancement, etc.
work with their hands…..so anyone who works with their hands has not “developed” to a status that you have achieved and is not due just compensation. That’s not straw man, cupcake, that’s your own words expanded. Our “strengths” are more than the few whose IQ’s are on the high side of 120.
You favor a living wage, eh? Please explain why you do, how you would achieve it, and what person on the political scene is positioned to act on it.
…but the developing world can use those jobs and has the capacity for them. They are jobs that we all need to exist if we want to use the products that come from it and as such they are valuable. Surely, you know the answers to your last paragraph. I favor a living wage for the same reasons I assume you do, we get there by legislating it and anyone who favors it and holds a lawmaking position can act on it.
It’s not just the manufacturing of IPhones and Donald Trump Golf Shirts we’re talking abut here. I’m talking about the entire economy of the USA, not just a few sectors. This whole “manufacturing” tangent is a red herring. Tell me what full time (40 hour) job in Massachusetts that ought not pay at least $15 an hour with full medical, sick leave, vacation time and personal days. Tell me where Hillary is on all of those.
…I feel that any jobs fall into the category you mention? I AGREE with you on all of that (including, like you, wishing that medical benefits were moot relative to employment because I’d prefer single-payer). Clinton has stood with people fighting for $15 at the local and state levels and has said she would sign a federal bill to that effect if it landed on her desk. It’s all right here for those with ears to hear.
…but she will not lead.
That’s not what I look for in a president.
We should definitely cut off all funding to all this unnecessary innovation stuff.
Consider, for example, feudal Europe which had an excellent track record of keeping out all that useless innovation stuff. They did pretty well for their workers. No one every offered serfs iPhones for breakfast.
You missed the point as well. Nowhere did I suggest we ought to cut all funding for innovation. But that’s the straw man you wish to use in your personal attack against me.
We need to re-think what the goals of our innovation are. That’s the point. If you want to keep misquoting me, that’s your option. It’s getting rather boring however.
No one has a platform consisting of support for innovation alone. One could pick out any single item in a list of the things it would take to alter income inequality and write about it.
By the way, where’s your retraction of your assertion about the press’ “love for Hillary Clinton” backed by the link you posted proving the opposite? You don’t particularly seem to care about truth, do you?
“No one has a platform consisting of support for innovation alone.”
No one said there was such a platform.
“You don’t particularly seem to care about truth, do you?”
Please, stay in the subject. Personal attacks against members of BMG are in poor taste.
.
cause it’s true. The media ADORES Hillary as would be expected. The media and she are both “corporate” and in this for the “corporate’ good.
which contradicts this.
Have you no honor?
The core problem, that of unaffordable student debt, is farther and farther away from being solved, but we continue to cherry pick constituencies which are offered a temporary fix – for three years, in this case, to startup founders, and the first 10 to 20 startup employees.
There is no “start-up economy” today.
The overwhelming majority of engineers who choose to spend 3-5 years in a startup may, if they are fortunate and the investors are generous, get some Founder’s stock that doesn’t even make good toilet paper. Compensation, if paid at all, is horrific — especially if work load and conditions are factored in.
It is true that a few lucky men and women win big in this game. Focusing on those men and women is like examining Lottery winners and choosing to emulate them as a financial planning strategy.
The student debt problem MUST be solved. The way we fund new startups must be changed.
More than anything else, the wealth that is now concentrated in the top 0.1% (that’s where most venture funding originates — nobody else can afford the risks) MUST be recaptured and returned to the rest of us.
A successful startup like HP or Apple on the west coast and Digital Equipment Corporation, Apollo, or Lotus in Massachusetts is extraordinarily unlikely today.
While it is indeed true that startup shares rarely pay off, you can still get paid quite well as an engineer even at a startup (provided it has gotten its first real round of financing, of course) and will probably have no trouble paying off yout student loans. People with expensive humanities degrees who don’t end up in finance, will likely have a harder time getting a job that will pay off their loans.
In any case, Clinton’s proposal is for:
so we are not talking only about Kendall Square tech startups here unless they somehow fit the second category. This could simply be opening a restaurant or bike shop in an eligible community. Of course, that amount of money is a drop in the bucket for kids graduating from expensive private schools.
… with a hammer in his hand. Having died without benefits, he’s likely buried in an unmarked grave.
You’re fighting an age old fight. And you’re destined to lose. Maybe your great-great-grandchildren will tell the legend of how you died with an ipad in your hand… =-). Innovation does create jobs. We do need to foster innovation. The article you linked to (“I can’t eat an ipad”) has people complaining about the price of groceries. But innovation in agriculture, packaging, refrigeration and transportation has led to a far greater variety of shelf-stable products than ever before seen in the history of the world. An American grocery store in 2016 is a study in abundance and wealth. Some of it good. Some of it not so much.
Like the legend of John Henry, there will always be people left behind by innovation. That’s a problem. I’m not sure I disagree with your evident conclusion that Hillary Clinton isn’t the one to solve it… But that’s not a reason to be against innovation.
And, without knowing much about Uber, definitively, I will note that I’ve heard a number of recruitment ads for Uber that bill it as extra income on your own schedule. Which suggests that “Uber driver” isn’t a primary position: more like structure moonlightingl. I would imagine, under these circumstances, less than $35K and no benefits to be de rigueur, in the hopes that a full time position, or a spouse, provides benefits…
It’s a tax code, trade policy, and labor laws.
I think it sums up what I am trying to say. “Innovation” ought not be limited high tech cutting edge things. Even a simple grocer can bring innovation of a sort that not only brings a better mousetrap, but puts an emphasis on the lives of the mousetrap builders. It’s a 15 minute video.