Political Realignment and Party Umbrellas

An interesting article -  http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/2016-election-realignment-partisan-political-party-policy-democrats-republicans-politics-213909?cmpid=sf

I've been thinking about how incompatible various political ideologies are,  even though they are stuck under a party umbrella due to our two party system.  Not sure I entirely agree with the analysis here, but I liked that the author was pointing this out.

I've actually been thinking what parties we would have if we had a parliamentary system.  That is, the Republican party could actually be divided into fiscal conservatives, christian conservatives, libertarians and (I suppose, based off the article) nationalists.  Not sure business interests and free trade are a separate strain or are mixed in with the others.   Christian conservatives are not actually about limiting government, at least when it comes to the transgender bathroom bill and other examples I could give.   That kind of conflicts with the libertarian ideology.

I actually didn't bother writing the post on this because I've got a harder time delineating the Democratic side.  Liberals, progressives, labor, social justice...

Not ready to write that one.

Of course, I also was thinking of writing about the problem with getting too focused on ideology in the first place.  When studying for my Master's in Public Affairs, we talked about evidence based policies.  To me, that's crucial.  If evidence shows something supports our goals (what goals being another far too long discussion for right now)  then I don't care whether it fits neatly into any of the existing frameworks.  If privatization works, I'm for it.  If privatization doesn't (some public services don't really have a competitive private sector in the first place, so you're just adding another layer of inefficiency), then I'm not.

Hard-heartedness

I wanted to discuss a couple things that seemed only distantly related at first.  Upon further reflection, however, I think both have to do with the human tendency to harden our hearts.  And so I kind of want to begin with a Bible quote instead (for those of you who aren't very religious, please take this as coming from someone who had a religious upbringing and finds it easier to talk about this by drawing on those experiences.  It's not meant to proselytize or convert anyone.)

"Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning." Matthew 19:8-9

Most people discuss this one, rather obviously, when they want to talk about divorce.  Yet I want to discuss the concept of a hard heart more.  So much of the politics of today seem to require hardening your heart in one way or another.  Mostly in self-defense, I think.  After all we've all seen people begging on the streets, and most of us find some reason to ignore them.  (For me, personally, I would rather support a homeless shelter or food pantry that will hopefully be more involved in their lives and make sure my donation is used well.  In other words, I don't really trust the people asking for money on street corners.  Everything I know about the world says that's probably a good thing, yet there's an inner voice that says being able to ignore suffering when it's right in your face is not really what God asked us to do.)

I wanted to tie this in with two different topics.  The first touches on a strain of thinking I've noticed on the right.  I dated someone over a decade ago who once said he thought we should nuke the entire mid-east and turn it into glass.  At the time I ignored it, because I didn't think he truly meant what he was saying and I also knew he was not in any position to actually make it happen.  In other words, idle words by someone expressing an emotion rather than a real policy.  He was condensing an entire region down to a shallow and superficial caricature that he considered a threat, and indulging in wishful thinking.  In reality, any such plan would be horrible.  

Every region of the world has families.  Children.  Women.  Men.  Some people who may be cruel or a threat, and others who are just trying to raise their families in some semblance of peace.  There's an entire field of thought focused on what would make a 'just war', what's considered a reasonable and proportional response, and what he was suggesting was so clearly out of proportion that it wasn't even worth taking seriously.

And yet I hear comments like that, still.  Even worse, we have a presidential candidate who seems to believe the same thing.  What was almost laughable in someone with absolutely no power to make it happen becomes pretty scary when it's said by someone who could.

I understand, to a certain extent, why we harden our hearts like that.  You can't serve in the military, can't make peace with what you are being asked to do (to other human beings, albeit from an opposing force), without finding some way of closing off your empathy.  Hell, I hate terrorists so much sometimes that it kind of scares me.  The things they do are horrible.  I understand why people choose to do so, and yet I think it's in some ways a mistake.  I suppose in some ways I'm influenced by a book I read some time ago, in which the author talked about how prisoners of war were not affected by PTSD the way soldiers were, despite both dealing with awful and traumatic events (with the exception of Holocaust victims).  That part of the reason soldiers were affected was because of the things they did during the fight.  In other words, we harden our hearts to fight a war...but it has consequences.  A part of us knows that what we are doing is done to people who in other circumstances are just like us.  

I, personally, don't like to forget that.  Not because I think we should stop fighting, because if I believe it's worth fighting even knowing that, then it's truly important.  I sometimes wonder if that explains some gender differences I've heard of off and on.  No scientific studies of it, of course, and I hate to say there's a gender difference for sure.  Yet even though men do the bulk of fighting and spying I've heard that the women who get involved are often even harder and more dedicated than the men.  Spying, for example, involves lying and betraying people you are spending a lot of time with.  Time that generally leads to some sort of sense of fellowship.  That's actually really hard to do.  But if you've convinced yourself it's worth doing, worth fighting for, then it's a little easier. 

And so I can say that jihadists are human.  They have feelings, and are trying to do what they think is right.  If they gave up fighting and chose to live a quiet life in peace and security somewhere, I would be okay with that.  Maybe even pity them.  But as a movement, as a belief system that justifies murder, torture, rape and slavery...they are worth fighting against. (And we'd better make sure our own belief system doesn't justify the same sorts of things.)  And that is also why I oppose overly simplistic beliefs that justify hardening our hearts and lead us to say inhumane, stupid, and poorly thought out things like "let's nuke the middle east".

The second, related, topic goes back to my question on modern slavery.  "How can anyone justify doing that to another human being?".  Clearly, the managers and business owners that are dependent on debt bondage and control have hardened their hearts to the people working for them.  Sometimes it's necessary.  Hell, I manage people, I know exactly why and how it's necessary.  You get someone who isn't performing well, and who isn't a good fit, and who isn't really improving despite your attempts to train and develop them, and you have to let them go.  It sucks to know what sort of trauma doing so causes.  The job loss, the uncertainty, the pain of not having any money.  And if they have a family, you know it will cause all sorts of difficulty for them as well.  For children, even.  All you can do is hope that they find a better fit somewhere else, some other place where they can excel and succeed...because they clearly are not doing so where they were. 

We have this image of the good businessman as someone who makes the tough decisions - and yet to make those tough decisions, they have to harden their hearts and ignore the very human costs to the people under their responsibility.  And yet I think there's another way.  I tried finding an article I read years ago, unfortunately all my search terms come up with other studies.  It was a company that ran into trouble and had to downsize.  As my search terms indicated, there are a whole bunch of problems that come when a company lets people go.  The ones who stay are more afraid of losing their jobs, morale suffers, the company as a whole suffers.  So much so that some people debate whether downsizing really pays off.  The article I read said that this company managed to avoid most of the backlash, and they did so by opening up the decision on who to let go to their employees.  The employees met in groups, and their recommendations didn't always have to do with who was the best worker.  Sometimes it was "so-and-so has a family of four that would suffer more if they lost their job".  Yet allowing the employees that level of engagement and control meant the ones that the company as a whole did not suffer as much when they did downsize. 

And so a parallel seems apparent.  Just as a soldier hardens their heart to the enemy, and yet can probably be an effective fighter if they don't (I would even argue a 'more effective fighter', except that the type of fighter I envision won't fight for unjustified reasons...which can cause problems with discipline if you've got leadership that doesn't appreciate that), so a business man or woman hardens their heart to their employees, and yet might possibly be an effective business leader if they don't.  Perhaps even a more effective business leader. 

It goes against the grain, goes against a lot of cultural beliefs.  Just consider the pressure Costco gets for paying higher wages.  Or the backlash against that company that decided to pay it's employees $70,000 a year.

Yet what if the hard-hearted business leader is actually a bad thing?

More on Nevada

http://www.politifact.com/nevada/statements/2016/may/18/jeff-weaver/allegations-fraud-and-misconduct-nevada-democratic/

A Travesty of Democratic Politics

If there is ever anything that would make me #Never Hillary, and I don't say this lightly, it would be what happened in Nevada yesterday.


I don't have time to write anything more, have to work today.

What Threatens America - Internal Cleavages, II

Okay, okay.  Today I want to talk about Trump.  Or to be more accurate, what Trump's candidacy represents.

I have to admit that when I (reluctantly) talk about Trump I normally talk about what I actually understand.  Namely, the appeal he has for people who feel left out and ignored.  The people who feel they've lost their job to China or Mexico.

But one of the first positive responses to Trump I heard was from someone thrilled to hear a public figure say whatever he really thought.  For some, Trump's lack of political correctness is a huge part of his appeal.

I feel like this is a tricky one to address, because you either sound like you're a racist (i.e. I should be able to say what I like even if it's really hurtful to someone else, and I don't care that it bothers you so there) or you sound like a nagging parent (i.e. why can't you respect other people?)  That, or you're an apologist for racists...excusing the hurt their words and attitudes can do to people who've been hurt often enough already.  Or, on the flip side, you're an intolerant hypocrite who tries to make everyone conform to your views.

I could go on and on, but I think you know all the stereotypes.  All the ways we portray the side we don't agree with.  There's even cute little facebook memes that capture a viewpoint in one neat little picture  (I have a much harder time finding the liberal memes on political correctness, btw)

And the very difficulty we have talking about this is a sign of what a huge problem it is.  It means we are not have a national discussion, we practically can't talk about it.  Not in a caring and empathic way, one that doesn't outright dismiss the other side. 

This was something I noticed when our company had their Culture of Inclusion summit.  We spend a day and a half there, some clearly annoyed at being forced to attend, and only touched on the attendees real thoughts at the tail end when someone anonymously asked a question. 

The Starbucks attempt to start conversations about race was a disaster.  Unequivocally a failure.

And in this day and age, where we see anonymous hate and internet trolls that aren't always doing it for the lols, I think it's safe to say that we have a public consensus and some pretty powerful private dissent.  (For good or bad.  I'm trying my best not to condemn any one side right now, as this post isn't about saying who is wrong or who is right.  I'll leave that for another time.)

Unskilled Labor

I wanted to add a little bit on unskilled labor, based on my own experiences.

At my company we have a mix of company employees and contract labor.  Our contracted labor is temporary, and can work a maximum of 1 year at a time.  They don't get benefits, and are paid less than the company associates.  In my experience and most of my fellow supervisors, contract labor is almost more trouble than it's worth.  it takes time to interview them, then more time for the background checks...and many don't even make it through that process.  If they get hired and are good, either we hire them for a company position or they find something better elsewhere.  If they aren't good, then we wind up firing them.  Often for attendance issues.  Turnover can get rather high, which means we're also spending a lot of time training them...and we can be left short-handed at particularly bad periods of time.  It also seems like their less motivated than our company associates, so their work can be sloppier and slower.  From a production perspective it really sucks. 

The company as a whole, of course, is looking at other factors.  It's easier to flex contract labor to the needs of the business, hiring more if we get busy and letting others go if we are slow.  It's also cheaper, from a benefits perspective.  (Supposedly.  If you include all the training time and overtime when we're shorthanded, it really depends.  I believe we successfully argued that a few of these positions should be converted to company employees...but we're not going to get all of them.)

I wanted to discuss one particular task that on the face of it is about as unskilled as we get.  Since our distribution center ships about 12,000 lines of product a day, we go through a LOT of cardboard and plastic shrink wrap.  Every time you empty a box of product, that box has to go somewhere.  Every time we unwrap a pallet of product, the shrink wrap has to go somewhere.  We try to recycle as much as we can, so we have a baler or two where we scrunch the cardboard or plastic down and wrap it with baling wire, then stage it for pick up.  We also try to re-use some particular boxes (we call moon boxes and jewel boxes) where the flaps on the bottom fold...easy to flatten, easy to fold together again to create a box when needed.  So we hire contract labor to sort the cardboard, place the re-usable boxes in densos and bale the rest.

Since workers throughout the facility are picking product (and thus breaking down boxes and discarding shrink wrap) we have collection points all over...and utility drivers that will move the material to the baling area.

Like I said, baling is about as unskilled as it gets here.  But this is what happens when we're shorthanded -

The material can't get baled fast enough, the utility driver starts running out of space to place the material.  The driver may try to place it down one of our aisles, but now it's in the way of equipment pickers.  They can't reach pallets of product unless they  move the cardboard or plastic out of the way. 

If the utility driver can't find a place to put it, then they just stop taking the material from the collection points.  The employees then run out of space to place the cardboard and start piling it on an overhead rack that runs all along the conveyor.  Next thing you know, you're up to your ears in cardboard.

Since the baling job doesn't require any particular skill, it's actually hard to keep the best workers there.  We always have better places to put them.  Or, again, they feel underutilized and find some other job.  But since we don't put our best there, we have to spend more time supervising the area to make sure the employees aren't sneaking off to check the cell phones (that they aren't supposed to be carrying in the first place) and making sure they're actually working.  That's assuming they show up regularly in the first place.

It's particularly frustrating when you get someone who is a good fit.  Who is reliable, works hard, and shows up regularly.  Frustrating because you can only keep them for a year (assuming they complete that year), and once they're gone you're right back on the merry-go-round. 

I run into that in my current role as well, and still have some associates upset when a particularly reliable temp completed his year we couldn't keep him.  Ever since then, it's been a month or so where we're shorthanded while I interview candidates for the position, followed by a month or two where the position is filled, then losing them for one reason or another.  Oh and, btw, if we're in overtime or have heavy volume and we're shorthanded I don't like to pull my full time associates away from processing to do that job.  Which means half the time my shipping associate and I are doing the bulk of it, and I ask my associates to do some of the other tasks (i.e. wrapping their pallets instead of staging them by the wrapper for the temp to handle).

Some of this speaks volumes about the current labor pool in the area.  I think unemployment is actually somewhat low (about 4%) so it's hard to get any response to a posting in the first place.  Some of it, however, also speaks to how little incentive they have to do a good job.  Or rather, their only real reward is to do well enough to get hired on full time.  That and the fact that warehouse work does pay more than minimum wage.

Cardboard baler is definitely an unskilled position - yet the consequences of treating the position as easily replaceable can have a big impact on our operations. 
 

Modern Slavery, and Thoughts Thereof.

Boy Drinking Tea near Brickmaker.  Helmand Province, Afghanistan

When I was reading about modern slavery, the author mentioned slavery amongst some brickmaking families in Pakistan.  The way it works is this: someone comes and offers a great job.  "Come work here, the pay is great!".  When someone takes the job they will find that they 'owe' money for transportation to the work site.  Plus the site is so remote that it's hard to buy food and living essentials.  Those are provided by the business, at a higher rate than normal. 

The worker soon finds that he (primarily a 'he') keeps sinking into debt.  This might be the case regardless - some brick making businesses are better than others -  but dishonesty on the part of some managers makes it worse.  These workers can't read or write, and so they have no way of verifying that their debts are being documented correctly.  Or that attempts to pay if off are counted correctly.  So even the hardest workers, ones who have no family emergencies to pay for, don't go into further debt because of unexpected illnesses or a planned wedding, will sometimes wind up deeper in debt because of this dishonesty.

While in debt the worker can't leave.  Can't quit and go find a better job.  Can't take out a loan and go to school.  The business might trade his debt (and thus his labor) off to someone else, but it never truly goes away.  If the worker causes trouble or tries to leave, the owner can try to call in the debt right then and there.  As long as the worker keeps working, the owner may let the debt ride.  This debt can also be passed on from generation to generation.  So someone might be making bricks simply because their father or grandfather took a job that promised great wages and wound up sinking into debt.

While I took the picture above in Afghanistan (and not Pakistan), I wonder if there were some other questions I could have or should have asked when we visited this brick maker.  I somehow assumed it was a mom and pop business, though in this culture the mom wouldn't be an owner.  It just looked like a family run business, since the kids were clearly part of a family working here.  Now I wonder who actually owned the business, and how well the family was paid.

As I've been reading up on this, I find myself wondering "How can people do this to each other?"  How can you be so divorced of empathy, compassion, respect for life and human dignity...how can you be so blocked off from our natural desire for connection...that you would create a system that depends so much on making other people's lives miserable?  And not just the worker's life, but the lives of his or her children?  The entire family?

I know enough to say that it's not exclusive to any one group or culture.  Our own history of company towns show some eerie similarities, though some of the companies had high ideals for creating a town like this.

What Kevin Bales indicates in his book Disposable People is that our modern economy makes it hard to know where and how such practices makes it into our modern economy.  It's made me think about what a fair cost is for a lot of things.  He mentions that oftentimes the business owners are divorced from the day to day running of that business, they just put pressure on the middle managers to save money...and some of those managers find the only way to make profit is to "reduce expenses" i.e. find ways of paying less for labor, since other expenditures are fixed.  And so we have charcoal burners in Brazil working in a similar fashion.  (I have carefully avoided talking about the sex trade, as there are other factors involved there...but some of the same dynamics are at play.)

What is a fair cost?  Maybe we really should be paying a couple of dollars more for those chocolate bars, as one example, that claim fair pay for the workers.  Or (to bring this closer to home) maybe an extra 17 cents for a Big Mac isn't such a big deal, if it allows workers to make enough to raise a family without food stamps and welfare.  And Walmart, which is one of the largest employers, shouldn't pay a wage that also requires welfare to raise a family.

"But what about the free market?" you might ask.  Aren't these the wages dictated by supply and demand?

And how can we expect these companies to compete if they raise our wages, when companies can go elsewhere to pay even less?

If companies were barely breaking even I would think that's a valid point.  Can't expect somebody to stay in business if they're not making any money.  Yet this concept of 'rents' interests me, because the difference between the sale price and the cost of making something can sometimes be substantial...and who gets what portion of that 'rent' says a lot about our economy today.

Shifting gears a bit,  I want to throw something else out there.  Back when Spain was extracting a lot of gold from the Americas most nations thought wealth came from hoarding gold.  The more gold you had in your treasury, the better off you were.  Part of Adam Smith's genius was pointing out that a good economy did not come from hoarding gold, but from a free market economy.  (btw, he also thought the government should be responsible universal education and public infrastructure).

I would love to see some studies asking whether the modern equivalent of 'hoarding gold' is doing the same thing.  That is, just as I've seen article after article talk about how wages are stagnant and the middle class is shrinking I've also seen repeated articles mention that various groups (large corporations, the 1%, etc) are sitting on piles of money.  Some of that is probably  necessary.  No business wants to go under because they lack liquidity during a crisis (that's happened to a couple big names already).  Yet how much of that is good business practice, and how much of that is the equivalent of hoarding gold?

As for the free market economy, I'm not entirely sure we're seeing it at play here.  Certain groups seem to have captured the market, to the point where they're able to influence the economy more than would happen otherwise.  For example, could Walmart seriously find workers if those workers were unable to get welfare to make ends meet?  At some point people will say 'it's not worth working my butt off when I can't make ends meet on the wages I'm getting'.  Or even "why should I work hard just to make sure some CEO or shareholder can buy a private yacht?"

Actually, I think people are already saying that...which is why this ties in a bit with immigration.  Illegal immigrants sometimes take the jobs that Americans don't want, because those jobs pay too little to appeal to someone who grew up here.  Businesses, rather than increasing their wages, hire illegals instead.

A few final thoughts.  I don't believe businesses should be charities.  Keeping unproductive people on the job hurts everyone.  At the same time, I think we've already made the decision (as a society) that we don't want people fired for lack of jobs to wind up homeless and dying on the streets.  Hence the social safety net, such as it is.

We're facing some major transitions today.  Automation - and globalization in the more industrialized economies - is taking away a lot of the jobs that used to be there for what's called an 'unskilled' population. (Even though it's called unskilled, experience and skill can make a big difference in improvement, so it's technically not.  I've seen this at work, where we have some pretty simple jobs anyone is capable of doing...and yet it's hard to find the right person for the role.)  I don't want to be a Luddite, and throw away this technology just to keep people employed.  I think that's a waste of resources.  I also think that very few people enjoy doing the boring, monotonous jobs that are best suited for automation.  (It seems sad to say that all a thinking and feeling human being is capable of is to do some repetitive and brainless task.  I kind of feel they should be paid more not because it requires a special skill, but because it's such a waste of human potential.  Reminds me of a science fiction book that had a restaurant that was considered classier and more expensive because it used real human servers.) 

And so I wonder what an economy like that would look like.  One where most people have the skills to do the higher level jobs, where only a few people work the 'unskilled' ones that can't be automated - and are paid well for it - and where our products cost what they 'should' in so doing.

Some things would probably be much more expensive, but if it's made using the charcoal  made by the Brazilians I mentioned above, isn't that an artificially low cost?  Or if a t-shirt is now twice as expensive, but the price we're used to came from ]mistreated garment workers, is that truly a fair price?

And how much would truly destroy a business, versus just changing what portions of the pie everyone gets?