from The Cleveland Low Wage Capitalism study group
FYI detailed bourgeios analysis of high tech prospects for 2010. The excerpted 10 points are only an outline. The body of the article has much supporting detail.
IDC's Information Technology and Communications industry predictions for 2010.
Some translation will immediately suggest itself, as the first paragraph shows:
PREDICTIONS
2010 will be a year of slim pickins for the IT and telecom industries.
But you won't have to hire back those workers you fired, Rather, we'll
find new ways to pay less to make more-- Chinese and Indian workers
can buy stuff too, we can rent low wage workers to other capitalists
from our factory in the clouds, those Chinese and Indian folks all need
a new phone and it wont be a landline, with fewer bucks to be made
we'll have to shift pockets faster. When all else fails, and it will, there
is always capitalist consolidation to fall back on.
Excerpt
P R E D I C T I O N S
2010 will be a year of modest recovery for the IT and telecommunications industries.
But the recovery will not mean a return to the pre-recession status quo. Rather, we'llsee a radically transforming marketplace — driven by surging demand in emerging
markets, growing impact from the cloud services model, an explosion of mobile
devices and applications, and the continuing rollout of higher-speed networks. These
transformational forces will drive key players to redefine themselves and their
offerings and will spark lots of M&A activity.
Growth will return to the IT industry in 2010. We predict 3.2% growth for the year,returning the industry to 2008 spending levels of about $1.5 trillion.
2010 will also see improved growth and stability in the worldwide telecommunications market, with worldwide spending predicted to increase 3%.
Emerging markets will lead the IT recovery, with BRIC countries growing 8–13%.
Cloud computing will expand and mature as we see a strategic battle for cloud platform leadership, new public cloud hot spots, private cloud offerings, cloudappliances, and offerings that bridge public and private clouds.
It will be a watershed year in the ascension of mobile devices as strategic platforms for commercial and enterprise developers as over 1 billion access the Internet, Phone apps triple, Android apps quintuple, and Apple's "iPad" arrives.
Public networks — more important than ever — will continue their aggressive evolution to fiber and 3G and 4G wireless. 4G will be overhyped, more wirelessnetworks will become "invisible," and the FCC will regulate over-the-top VoIP.
Business applications will undergo a fundamental transformation — fusing business applications with social/collaboration software and analytics into a newgeneration of "socialytic" apps, challenging current market leaders.
Rising energy costs and pressure from the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference will make sustainability a source of renewed opportunity for the IT industry in 2010.
Other industries will come out of the recession with a transformation agenda and look to IT as an increasingly important lever for these initiatives. Smart meters and electronic medical records will hit important adoption levels.
The IT industry's transformations will drive a frenetic pace of M&A activity.
Jewish and Palestinian workers unity in Israel today bodes well for future struggles
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Only in America
A nine year old disabled Black child in Birmingham, Alabama was beaten by his teacher to the point his skin broke.
Workers World Party
http://www.calebmaupin.blogspot.com
[Read the coverage here.]
His crime?
He got six answers wrong on a test.
I am so sick of people saying that the U.S. is to "soft" and "liberal." This says the opposite I believe. The person who beat this child, is probably a conservative. It is probably the same kind of person that tells youth who drop out of school, or later can't get jobs that its "their fault."
I sarcastically say, "nothing encourages young people to stay in school like knowing they can have their flesh cut for missing test questions."
This capitalism, this "American" version of it with tough love, "compassion is weakness and mental illness" rhetoric is disgusting. This child alone is case enough for a revolution.
-Caleb T. Maupin
Workers World Party
http://www.calebmaupin.blogspot.com
HOW NOT TO COUNT THE POOR
Though written in 2005, this important paper has been ignored.You know those $1 a day income poverty demarcations that all global studies seem to take for granted-- they stand in the way of our measuring the extent of poverty and evaluating remediation efforts. All this, and some simple but better measures, are explained in great detail in this surprisingly brief paper.
http://www.columbia.edu/~sr793/count.pdf
While I have no reason to believe that the authors are Marxists, the following excerpt recalls a relevant point from Marx's Capital, v.1.
Our rejection of the Bank’s procedure does not support the skeptical conclusion that theattempt to provide a standard of income poverty comparable across time and space isdoomed to fail. There exists a much better procedure which can be easily implemented.This alternative procedure would construct poverty lines in each country that possess acommon achievement interpretation. [the authors go on to explain these common achievements as consisting of, e.g., gaining satisfaction of basic nutritional needs.]
That the authors have got even this far makes this article worth some study. Marx after all pointed way back to Aristotle, on much the same basis as that which might lead us to appreciate this criticism of neoliberal shell games, for recognizing that “Exchange cannot take place without equality, and equality not without commensurability." That neither they nor Aristotle recognized labor as the tertium comparationis in these value comparisons does not render their bit of work completely useless.
This paper calls out such institutions as the World Bank for using distorted money measures where, instead, a focus on "elementary human requirements" is needed. This leads the authors to focus on the common use value of the commodities that the poor need access to (a rationale that has some merit). The Banksters are, not surprisingly, focused only on the other end of the duality (exchange value).
So, to paraphrase Monty Python, if your stick has only one end, and if that end is not covered with shit, you must be a Bankster.
The authors' abstract may provide further inducement for you to read the article in full:
Abstract:
The World Bank’s approach to estimating the extent, distribution and trend of globalincome poverty is neither meaningful nor reliable. The Bank uses an arbitraryinternational poverty line that is not adequately anchored in any specification of the realrequirements of human beings. Moreover, it employs a concept of purchasing power"equivalence" that is neither well defined nor appropriate for poverty assessment. Thesedifficulties are inherent in the Bank’s “money-metric” approach and cannot be crediblyovercome without dispensing with this approach altogether. In addition, the Bankextrapolates incorrectly from limited data and thereby creates an appearance ofprecision that masks the high probable error of its estimates. It is difficult to judge thenature and extent of the errors in global poverty estimates that these three flaws produce.However, there is reason to believe that the Bank’s approach may have led it tounderstate the extent of global income poverty and to infer without adequate justificationthat global income poverty has steeply declined in the recent period. A new methodologyof global poverty assessment, focused directly on what is needed to achieve elementaryhuman requirements, is feasible and necessary. A practical approach to implementing analternative is described.
from The Cleveland Low Wage Capitalism study group
http://www.columbia.edu/~sr793/count.pdf
While I have no reason to believe that the authors are Marxists, the following excerpt recalls a relevant point from Marx's Capital, v.1.
Our rejection of the Bank’s procedure does not support the skeptical conclusion that theattempt to provide a standard of income poverty comparable across time and space isdoomed to fail. There exists a much better procedure which can be easily implemented.This alternative procedure would construct poverty lines in each country that possess acommon achievement interpretation. [the authors go on to explain these common achievements as consisting of, e.g., gaining satisfaction of basic nutritional needs.]
That the authors have got even this far makes this article worth some study. Marx after all pointed way back to Aristotle, on much the same basis as that which might lead us to appreciate this criticism of neoliberal shell games, for recognizing that “Exchange cannot take place without equality, and equality not without commensurability." That neither they nor Aristotle recognized labor as the tertium comparationis in these value comparisons does not render their bit of work completely useless.
This paper calls out such institutions as the World Bank for using distorted money measures where, instead, a focus on "elementary human requirements" is needed. This leads the authors to focus on the common use value of the commodities that the poor need access to (a rationale that has some merit). The Banksters are, not surprisingly, focused only on the other end of the duality (exchange value).
So, to paraphrase Monty Python, if your stick has only one end, and if that end is not covered with shit, you must be a Bankster.
The authors' abstract may provide further inducement for you to read the article in full:
Abstract:
The World Bank’s approach to estimating the extent, distribution and trend of globalincome poverty is neither meaningful nor reliable. The Bank uses an arbitraryinternational poverty line that is not adequately anchored in any specification of the realrequirements of human beings. Moreover, it employs a concept of purchasing power"equivalence" that is neither well defined nor appropriate for poverty assessment. Thesedifficulties are inherent in the Bank’s “money-metric” approach and cannot be crediblyovercome without dispensing with this approach altogether. In addition, the Bankextrapolates incorrectly from limited data and thereby creates an appearance ofprecision that masks the high probable error of its estimates. It is difficult to judge thenature and extent of the errors in global poverty estimates that these three flaws produce.However, there is reason to believe that the Bank’s approach may have led it tounderstate the extent of global income poverty and to infer without adequate justificationthat global income poverty has steeply declined in the recent period. A new methodologyof global poverty assessment, focused directly on what is needed to achieve elementaryhuman requirements, is feasible and necessary. A practical approach to implementing analternative is described.
from The Cleveland Low Wage Capitalism study group
Minimum Wage - Blake Fall-Conroy Sculpture
http://blakefallconroy.com/18.html
"The minimum wage machine allows anybody to work for minimum wage. Turning the crank will yield one penny every 5.04 seconds, for $7.15 an hour (NY state minimum wage). If the participant stops turning the crank, they stop receiving money. The machine's mechanism and electronics are powered by the hand crank, and pennies are stored in a plexiglas box."
http://blakefallconroy.com/18.html
"The minimum wage machine allows anybody to work for minimum wage. Turning the crank will yield one penny every 5.04 seconds, for $7.15 an hour (NY state minimum wage). If the participant stops turning the crank, they stop receiving money. The machine's mechanism and electronics are powered by the hand crank, and pennies are stored in a plexiglas box."
Morbid Symptoms: Current Healthcare Struggles
http://www.feedly.com/home#subscription/feed/http://socialistresistance.org/?feed=rss2[action.subscribe
Leo Panitch and Colin Leys have just brought out the 2010 annual volume of the Socialist Register, Morbid Symptoms: Health Under Capitalism, published by Merlin Press in London, Monthly Review Press in the US and Fernwood Books in Canada. The book provides a path-breaking assessment of health under capitalism, providing a systematic account of the antagonistic relationship between capitalism and human bodies, of how modern healthcare has been deeply penetrated by neoliberal capitalism, and the ways in which healthcare workers, activists and socialists are struggling and pursuing alternatives paths of solidarity in human health.
http://www.feedly.com/home#subscription/feed/http://socialistresistance.org/?feed=rss2[action.subscribe
Leo Panitch and Colin Leys have just brought out the 2010 annual volume of the Socialist Register, Morbid Symptoms: Health Under Capitalism, published by Merlin Press in London, Monthly Review Press in the US and Fernwood Books in Canada. The book provides a path-breaking assessment of health under capitalism, providing a systematic account of the antagonistic relationship between capitalism and human bodies, of how modern healthcare has been deeply penetrated by neoliberal capitalism, and the ways in which healthcare workers, activists and socialists are struggling and pursuing alternatives paths of solidarity in human health.
Satire from Товарищ Х with artwork by Tim Hosler
Cleveland Reds Go Green
Again Drawing PJC Censure
Again Drawing PJC Censure
Pictured above: Alexander reluctantly takes forward position
Cadres of the victorious Marxist Revolutionary Army of Cleveland drew rebuke again today, this time for their CFL light bulb recycling program. The People's Justice Committee took particular exception to their employment of Anthony J Alexander, who as the head of FirstEnergy was responsible for the infamous Cleveland Plan that forced destitute workers to buy $21 CFL light bulbs, in what the Committee termed "a vengeful manner."The recycling, as rendered by an artist at the scene, is pictured above so that readers may judge for themselves if the PJC rebuke was warranted.
_________________________
Товарищ Х is a political activist and composer who lives in Cleveland, Ohio.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)