Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow, the song goes on and on as the then incoming Clinton team danced the inauguration night away.
Satellite and the information superhighway open access, as well as easy credits built an unsustainable momentum of shopping on the run.
Imagine the nation on an airplane, just about to take off, and tries to text with two hands before “all electronic devices are to be turned off”.
That’s how the past few decades have been: productivity rises, but unemployment also rises.
Offshoring fuels this infrastructural change but only by that much. Young, single women in the cities now earned more than men. Salary and the city.
Peace in the ME? Let’s have it first at home.
And predictably, George W Bush memoir could barely compete with Tony Blair’s, which are on sale at the bookstore near you.
On a BBC interview, he even pressed for military readiness as far as Iran is concerned.
That decision will be in his memoir, 2.0.
Meanwhile, anything that carries an Apple logo on it should be purchased: Apple TV?
Why not. Let’s converge, like the French boulevards, all in one big circle.
Device and desire.
To hold a job used to be key for one to support his family.
Productivity now is key to keeping a job in this economy of supply and demand.
Friedman keeps telling his children “study harder, or else, kids from India and China will take your jobs”.
I now must add, “kids from India and China, work cheaper, or else, kids from Vietnam and Malaysia will take your jobs”.
Economist has an article about Vietnam as “the plus one country”, i.e. hedge your “manufacturing offshore” bet, so when wages rise in China, you can then open
another one down in Vietnam for wage arbitrage. Soon, the same can be said about IT outsourcing and everything else imaginable: medical tourism, dentistry lab,
x-ray scan and analysis. Late entrants into the outsourcing game gain some obvious advantages: the Web made is possible for them to “don’t stop thinking about tomorrow”. And the Clinton administration, by allowing satellite access and information superhighway flow, made possible productivity and connectivity.
The past two decades saw changes that must have worth a life time. So, unemployment and recession are a small price to pay, for the advancement of the race.
Just change Labor Day to Productivity Day, then I promise not to quarrel any more on the issue.
Thang Nguyen 555 