I consider noted huckster and neologist Richard Florida to be something like the manlove-child of Thomas Friedman and Malcolm Gladwell, a bumptious popularizer of pseudosociological hooey that flatters his petite bourgeoisie readership by assuring them that they, their Volkswagens, and their attendant Trader Joes and Ikeas are the true engines of productive urban economies, which are in turn the fundaments of our now-passing national prosperity. That said, Will Wilkinson excerpts a fairly reasonable passage in which Florida notes that both the bailouts and the so-called stimulus seem designed (successfully or not, this remains to be seen) to prolong the life of a structurally unsustainable economy based on inflated home values, easy credit, and a massively, insanely overcapitalized financial sector.
On the other hand, I die a little bit when I read:
The creative class, which now accounts for some 40 million workers and about a third of the workforce is much more flexible and resilient. It is this changed economic class and occupational structure which are keeping us from Depression-level unemployment rates.This is pure and simple the class prejudice of the college-educated. Those 40 million workers mostly aren't involved in anything that could reasonably be described as a creative-productive endeavor. They're not writing code, doing research, running high-tech ventures. They're middle managers. They're Regional Junior Account Executives. They're End User Support Specialists. They're Spend Process Managers, Sourcing Specialists, Compliance Coordinators. They're the middle echelons of the service economy AKA the knowledge economy. They occupy a class of employment whose existence owes to the structurally deficient economy that Richard Florida is going to go on to criticize.
The idea that their supposed flexibility and resiliency prevent Depression-level unemployment is pure flattery, untethered from fact. What has so far prevented Depression-level unemployment is that the current "crisis" or "downturn" is not (not yet) as severe as the Depression. And should we see a rapid contraction in auto industry and financial sector employment, then even the jiggered official unemployment statistics will quickly move into the double digits. Now this may be inevitable. It may even be desirable for exactly the painfully necessary reasons that Florida outlines. But it is not directly related to a workforce tranche invented out of thin air as a coinage for a piece of pop social science.
15 comments:
I'm Assistant to the Project Manager. I am also waiting for my field of engineering to become flush with new talent, now that America herself has determined that there can be no Progress without Infrastructurez.
can I go home now?
I write code for a living, and I'm not sure I'd describe it as "creative-productive endeavor". I'm not sure I'd even describe it as an honest job. I don't know if my experience is representative, but the bulk of my "productive" activity consists of padding my estimates as much as I think the client will accept, and then fudging my timesheets.
I'm not entirely convinced that writing software to streamline the operations of various corporate behemoths is "productive" in any sense of the word. However, it pays quite well and they let me work a 30-hour week.
my wife is senior manager of organizational development and strategic planning. This is not middle management, but upper middle management. Hence, two things have to happen before we hit the bread lines:
companies have to wake up to the fraud that is such stuff.
a lot of junior managers of organizational development need to lose their jobs first.
This I hope will keep us shopping at Harris Teeters for many years to come.
If not, I'm a criminal defense lawyer, and will be busy defending all those former junior managers who will be knocking over 7-11s and embezzling funds from down-scale employers to keep up the lifestyles to which they've become accustomed.
Cowabunga.
Dunc, I'm trying to decide if you've "gone Galt" or "gone French" - "it pays quite well and they let me work a 30-hour week."
There's such a fine line between the two life paths, depending on whether you live in, say, Knoxville, TN or, San Francisco, CA.
D'ou etes-vous?
Dunc, I'm trying to decide if you've "gone Galt" or "gone French"
Well, I'm not living in a bunker and hoarding canned food, and my motivation for working shorter hours has nothing to do with an objection to higher marginal taxation and everything to do with having better things to do with my time (such as scratching my balls, for example). And I do love a fine cheese.
However, I'm British, and slacking off at work is a time-honoured British tradition. My impression is that the French work shorter hours, but the British do less while they're there. Me, I'm trying to combine the two...
Does that help answer the question?
If not, try this: there just isn't enough slack in the world. I'm hoping to redress the balance a little.
Peter: Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late, ah, I use the side door - that way Lumbergh can't see me, heh heh - and, uh, after that I just sorta space out for about an hour.
Bob: Da-uh? Space out?
Peter: Yeah, I just stare at my desk; but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch, too. I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work
Obligatory Onion link.
(This is a blog comments section, after all. Gotta keep up the forms.)
Praise Bob.
I spend a lot of time in Mexico. There aren't enough jobs here and the jobs don't pay squat.
Consequently the Mexicans have come up with numerous ad-hoc "job creation" programs. When you use a public restroom, first you pay 3 pesos to get in, then some dude standing by the towel rack hands you a paper towel (which you could easily have reached by moving your arm 6 inches to the right of the sink) and expects a 3-peso "tip". When you back your car out of a parking space, a homeless-looking guy runs up behind your rear windshield and signals you that it's safe to back up, then holds out his hand for a tip. Kids stand at every intersection with bottles of soapy water; they squirt it on your dusty windshield, creating an opaque slab of mud in your field of vision, before asking if you want your windshield cleaned for 5 pesos. One time, catching a cab as I walked out of a bus station, I watched an apparently fit guy sprint two whole blocks (on pace to do about a three-minute mile, so he was obviously healthy enough to perform a manual labor job), so that he could arrive just in time to put one hand on the last one of my suitcases as I dropped them into the cab's trunk, and then loudly (if breathlessly) demand a tip. Three different cleaning ladies in my office mop the floors continuously; they just start at one end of the building and mop their way backwards when they're finished -- they mop inside Engineers' offices while the Engineers are working -- because if they are observed not to be working at any given moment, they will immediately be fired.
I used to find all this stuff annoying, senseless, and frustrating.
Then I realized that, in the end, the system works out the same in both countries. What R. Florida calls "flexibility" that is keeping us from Depression-type unemployment levels, is really just the societal agreement that a certain class of people can get paid for doing nothing useful, only in order to keep them off the streets. In our case, it's the cubicle farms, a joyless and utterly unproductive job. So much for the death of Socialism, tovarisch; Marx gets the last laugh.
Deadwood is the unspoken but inevitable consequence of a policy that "growth is good". I would much rather pay these useless people to be wandering musicians, minstrels and storytellers, even if they can't carry a tune with a bucket and a handle; but nobody can create such a tradition by fiat.
Expect to start seeing more of the Mexican kind of "job creation" in the United States in a year or two. The infrastructure stimulus ain't gonna cut it, when our 'official' jobless rate starts hitting 10-12% (meaning the real rate is around 18-20%).
I suspected I might work with Dunc until he mentioned "corporate behemoths". Our clients are private/family-owned nobodies.
I've collected a few Florida-critical writings here. For some strange reason I didn't include anything by Joel Kotkin. To me, Florida brings to mind Sowell's line about "Self-congratulation as a basis for social policy". Half Sigma seems far more irked as the creative class has driven him to quasi-Marxism.
thanks for the smackdown on Richard Florida. My critical thinking alarms started going off as I first heard him blather on Canadian TV here in Toronto, where he's living and working now, and where he seems to have wowed and dazzled the Canadian media and intelligentsia with his half-baked, elitest, "pseudo-sociological hooey" as you describe it. Huckster and elitest is about right.
Let me assure you that despite our mostly (false) reputation as some great bastion of liberalism and "progressive paradise", our Canadian media, pundits, intelligentsia and politicians are just as incredibly stupid, dense, corrupt and elitest as yours. But that's probably true about the elite in every country and society.
I'd say that the grass is greener, but Canada, as we all know, is an icy moonscape. Of course, then there's British Columbia, as I've heard.
This Florida fellow is a twit. Why do I follow the links here? They always remind me that no matter how real shit gets, people still find nonsense to wrap themselves in.
I would much rather pay these useless people to be wandering musicians, minstrels and storytellers, even if they can't carry a tune with a bucket and a handle; but nobody can create such a tradition by fiat.
wow! this guy is on to something BIG! life like Pleasure Island in Pinocchio! free booze, free cigars, and no adults for EVERYONE! yay!
Expect to start seeing more of the Mexican kind of "job creation" in the United States in a year or two.
Hmm...dudes "helping" you parallel park, squeegee boys...add in tables of booksellers hawking discarded library books and I'd say you've pretty accurately described New York. I'm going to Mexico City in a few weeks--apparently, it'll feel just like home.
Anon 2:52 --
Yeah, my point is that you are, today, already paying these people to do nothing. You've been paying them all your life, and you've recently agreed to pay them $698 Billion in tax money in the Bailout. You've been paying these desk jockeys that money for decades in order to create PowerPoint presentations, stamp "Received" on your 27B-stroke-6, and above all, BLAWG ! ! ! Hey, if that's what you'd rather buy with your $698 Billion, then there's no accounting for taste, I suppose. Me, I say handing each of these useless talentless slobs a guitar would be a lot cheaper and perhaps marginally more fun to watch.
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