➻ Portfolio has released a new edition of The Business Beat. You’ll hear from Don Tapscott, author with Anthony D. Williams of Macrowikinomics (due out in late September), and Stan Slap, author of Bury My Heart at Conference Room B, which was a Jack Covert Selects this month. And, as always, you’ll hear from the man himself, as Mr. Covert tells us about Andy Grove’s Only the Paranoid Survive.
➻ Umair Haque posted a video last week about The Jobless-est Recovery and the Great Transformation, noting that “this is not just a jobless recovery, per se, but that it is the most jobless recovery for a century. and the link between the actual recovery in terms of pure GDP and job creation seems to be completely broken.” He begins to discuss what he sees as “a Great Transition, a Great Transformation” and the values that will be needed to do so. The video, however, doesn’t delve to much into what that will look like. For that, you’ll want to return to an older post of his, Reseeding the Economy.
➻ Or, you can always turn to Richard Florida and his book, the The Great Reset, which—especially amidst all the doom-and-gloom in publishing and the endless release of books about the crash and recession—is certainly one of the best and brightest books released this year. It’s a forward-looking, big picture book. Florida has been discussing such a transformation for years in his work on “the creative class,” but he also recognizes the need for a strong, blue collar working class. And so, he looked at Where the Blue-Collar Jobs Will Be in The Atlantic yesterday.
The good news is that the U.S. will continue to create relatively high-paying working class jobs. These jobs will continue to provide good livelihoods for the workers fortunate enough to have them. The bad news is that their rate of growth will be sluggish and not nearly enough to provide the amount of good, family-supporting jobs required to undergird a middle class of lower-skilled workers. The harsh reality is that blue-collar, working class jobs in the U.S. are increasing slowly, and they will grow the slowest in traditional manufacturing and industrial regions and communities whose economic and social life has revolved around these jobs.There is little policy-makers can do – aside from declaring a trade war – to bring back large numbers of these high-paying jobs. But they can develop strategies to improve not just the wages but the content of blue-collar work, by engaging workers more fully and seeing them as a source of innovation.
Head on over to the original post for some fascinating maps of the American labor landscape.
➻ Edward R. Schmitt, author of President of the Other America: Robert Kennedy and the Politics of Poverty touched on that topic a bit in a guest post at The Washington Post‘s Political Bookworm today. Speaking of Kennedy and his move against poverty in his day and the need for leaders to do the same today, he writes:
As Kennedy suggested … leadership matters. Even before the severe recession of the past three years, alarming exposés of a new class of “working poor” Americans … cautioned that a new endemic poverty, resistant to the traditional American tonic of employment, threatened to become a permanent part of the American economic landscape.
But significant leadership focusing popular attention on the problems of poor and near poor Americans has yet to re-emerge. The political will necessary to influence popular opinion and to address the growing problem of poverty in America can be renewed. Visible, national leadership on the issue is critical, and it is on this point that Kennedy’s story can be instructive.
Politicians with an eye toward their legacy would also do well to note that while Kennedy was a polarizing figure in his day, he is now often most fondly remembered for putting his political career on the line to become a president for the other America.
➻ Most Americans are hard-working, even the “struggling artists” out there. But we don’t always feel that working hard is working out, and we all get down on ourselves from time-to-time. In one of her most popular posts, Naomi Dunford at IttyBiz reminds us to remember that we’re not alone When [We] Feel Like A Raging Failure.
➻ Last week Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art, wrote about The Ego and the Self, and where the “Resistance” comes from. And in his Writer’s Journal this week, spoke to how the struggle of not working is far greater than struggle to do so.
I also know from experience that the alternative to doing my work is a hundred times worse than the pain or fear of doing it. I remember vividly the seven years when I did yield to fear and Resistance—and the hell it was for me and for people I loved. I can hear the whip crack. The fear of not doing it is stronger than the fear of doing it.
Amen.
➻ I was looking for Shellac’s “Squirrel Song,” but I couldn’t find a decent video so here is the exact opposite… Milk Thistle.
