Ohio chooses Romney, for now
CLEVELAND—Every four years, Ohio’s anonymous white, male, blue-collar worker emerges from obscurity like a ghost parting the fog over Lake Erie.
Who is this mystery man? Who will he vote for this time, in this presidential election?
The rest of the nation — or at least the presidential candidates and the journalists who cover them — are dying to know. Especially now that Mitt Romney squeaked through Ohio’s Republican primary by the skin of his shiny white teeth. This rambling, unpredictable state picked Romney in March. But what does that mean for November, assuming he’s the nominee?
Too much of the national political coverage will now proceed to lump together all white, blue-collar workers, regardless of whether they belong to a union. As if union affiliation were just a talking point, rather than an elevated standard of living. It’s a false equivalence, as these are usually two different groups of voters, and non-union workers — the ones less likely to be Democratic — have increasingly been up for grabs.
This year, maybe not. Recent developments in Ohio — coupled with the elitist, no-clue narrative of Romney — could chip away at past Republican gains.
Ohio’s primary exit polls don’t tend to reflect the differences between union and non-union voters. We know that 96 percent of the electorate was white, 53 percent of it male, and 32 percent made less than $50,000 a year. That last group slightly favored Santorum.
An unsung victory in healthcare
In 2008, 17 percent of office-based physicians and just 9 percent of hospitals had basic electronic health records (EHRs) and fewer than 10 percent used electronic prescriptions. This doesn’t mean most physicians were Luddites; rather, there were powerful disincentives to their adoption of health IT.
For example: Installing electronic health records required retraining physicians and staff, exacting months of significantly reduced productivity. Technology from different vendors typically did not communicate with each other, so the free flow of information — referral letters, hospital discharge summaries, lab results, X-rays and all the rest — that would make the investment worthwhile was not there. Then there was the network effect: Until a lot of doctors and hospitals were using electronic health records and a lot of vital information was available electronically — even if the various proprietary systems did communicate — it wasn’t worth it. And finally physicians feared that an expensive new EHR system would soon be obsolete, requiring another big capital investment.
On Feb. 17, 2009, President Obama signed the Recovery Act, which contained a number of healthcare provisions, including the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH), which nullified these disincentives. HITECH did this by providing physicians payments of up to $44,000 from Medicare and $65,000 from Medicaid — and hospitals getting millions of dollars, with amounts varying based on how many Medicare and Medicaid patients they cared for — to help defray the cost of EHR adoption. Obviously, this is not free money. Physicians and hospitals receive the incentive payments if their EHRs are certified as capable of supporting “meaningful use.” This, in practical terms, means they can be used for e-prescribing, securely exchanging patients’ health information and electronically submitting data on the quality of care. The law also includes a penalty for physicians and hospitals that do not implement EHRs: Their Medicare payments will be reduced beginning in 2015. It also empowers the government to set technology standards regarding interoperability and the secure exchange of health information.
A lot of naysayers carped that this was not an economic stimulus that would help get the country out of a recession, so it didn’t belong in the Recovery Act. Others complained about the myriad requirements necessary for meaningful use. And not a few physicians were resentful, declaring that they would stop practicing rather than adopt EHRs.
It’s now been a year since the administration released the regulations specifying meaningful use and what it takes to be certified — the nuts and bolts of implementing the law. The results have been nothing short of spectacular.
As of December 2011, the use of EHR among office-based physicians has nearly doubled to 34 percent with e-prescribing exceeding 40 percent. Over 41,000 physicians have received more than $575 million in incentive payments. Going electronic will allow physicians to more closely track patients, especially the chronically ill, enabling the seamless exchange of data across multiple physicians, hospitals and other providers. For instance, Delaware is completing a framework for the electronic exchange of patient information among all the state’s hospitals. And the more physicians and hospitals have electronic records, the more effective and useful the exchange of data will be, enhancing patient care, especially in emergencies.
The story is much the same among hospitals: 35 percent have adopted EHRs, and nearly 2,000 of the 4,700 hospitals have, collectively, received more than $2 billion in incentive payments. Every month has surpassed the previous month as measured by the number of physicians and hospitals that have signed up with the government for the EHR program, suggesting that these numbers will continue to rise.
A Sex Ed 101 curriculum for conservatives
Recent national kerfuffles over abortion and contraception access bring up many important questions: Should employers retain control over your wages and benefits after they sign them over to you? Is contraception, a service used by 99 percent of American women, really so controversial? How much state regulation should there be over women’s most private decisions? But amidst all those questions is one overarching one: Do conservatives need a crash course in sex ed?
Usually, when we think of the sex education debate, we think of junior high and high school kids putting condoms on bananas. But recent events indicate that this country needs remedial sex education for adults, specifically social conservatives who wish to hold forth on reproductive rights without seeming to know the basics regarding who has sex and how it works in 2012. With that in mind, I designed a quick curriculum for these surprisingly necessary courses.
Intercourse 101: It Takes Two to Tango. After voting for a mandatory ultrasound bill that serves no other purpose than to shame abortion patients for their sexuality, Virginia delegate David Albo complained in the legislature that he’s not getting the sex he feels entitled to from his wife. CNSNews columnist Craig Bannister shamed women on the pill for being “sex-crazed co-eds” who exhibit too much “sexual zeal” — before ending his piece by wistfully wishing he could have sex with all the sexually active women he just insulted. Rush Limbaugh, who is on his fourth marriage and is an admitted Viagra user, called Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown University law student who testified before Congress about her use of contraception, a “slut” and a “prostitute.”
In this first section of the remedial sex education course, we will discuss this sexual double standard: When having sex, men are behaving well and women behaving badly. The midterm will be an essay on the following prompt: “If women are supposed to say no to sex, whom do you propose straight men sleep with?”
Contraception 101: History as Prologue. Many conservatives appear to believe that prior to the Obama administration requiring employers to fully cover contraceptive care as part of their health plans, contraception wasn’t considered a medical service, but something more like a party item you pick up with your beer and cigarettes. Tina Korbe of Hot Air argued that supporters of the new regulation “labor under the illusion that contraception is a medical necessity.” Limbaugh argued that health insurance covering contraception means women are “paid to have sex.” The reaction on the right suggests that this is the first time in history someone has suggested that contraception care be included in general health benefits.
During this portion of the class, we will look at the history of medicalized birth control. Students will learn (in conjunction with another mandatory class, The Pill 101) that the birth control pill has always been controlled by doctors and pharmacies, and that insurance companies treat it as medical care by offering the drug with a co-pay. Special attention will be paid to the 28 states that already require contraception coverage, the existing Medicaid coverage of contraception, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission decision that found that contraception coverage is a normal part of women’s healthcare that should be covered by healthcare plans.
In my 20s , in the 1970s, I had my share of female friends with benefits. I always asked before sex, “Are you taking birth control pills?”or other appropriate questions. I used a condom if she insisted but usually not by mutual agreement. Adults need to be smart, protect yourself and others from all diseases if possible. Who should pay for this? I say the guy should be so grateful for sex he should pay or offer to pay for all condoms, spermicides, dental dams, female condoms, pills etc. “Girls don’t pay… Guys pay!!!” to quote the petite blond actress in American Grafitti the movie 1973. I agree. If you are lucky enough to “get lucky” with a girl, then yes guys pay!! BTW I am married 27 yrs have 2 adult children never asked the govt to prevent pregnancy for me or pay for it. I never made a baby except at age 36 and 40, married with a house, a nest for the baby. I am ok with BC but not abortion, day after abortion pill, or certainly not late term abortion. it is a baby in there. She is “with child” (pregnant)
Will conservatives embrace a consumption tax?
Headlines over the past couple of weeks have been dominated by reactions to President Obama’s new proposal for corporate tax reform. The optimism stems from the realization that practically all the major plans by Democrats and Republicans would move the U.S. tax code in the direction of a territorial-based system (in which a corporation is taxed on domestic, not foreign, income). Moreover, these plans all accept the premise that to make the U.S. code more competitive globally, the tax base must be broadened, and that means cutting deductions and preferences in exchange for lowering the top-line rate (i.e., down to between 25 percent and 28 percent from today’s 35 percent rate).
Even with this apparent consensus, however, it seems inevitable that actual reform will not occur until 2013. Perhaps more important, the way these issues play out in the coming months could very well shift the reform discussion from how to tax income to how to tax consumption for both individuals and corporations. Here are three developments to watch.
The politics require more “tax winners.” To get the corporate tax rate down to the new target range, Congress might have to cut both accelerated depreciation and the expensing of research and development. The difficult truth is that any revenue-neutral tax reform proposal would likely create as many (and maybe even more) losers than winners. In essence, a rate reduction to 28 percent might help a few industries, but slashing the deductions for capital spending or investment could end up raising the effective tax rate for even more companies. The net effect could be a slightly smaller economy relative to its full potential, as new investment and the growth of the available capital stock could be restrained. In an effort to broaden the coalition and create more winners, Congress will probably have to consider cutting the top rate even further, then redefining what’s actually counted as corporate income.
The window is closing for piecemeal tax reform. The politics of trying to get a “win” by tackling just the corporate side of the code will fade — once again — as everyone begins to realize just how intertwined the individual tax system is with its corporate counterpart. The government’s share of corporate revenues comes from dollars that would have otherwise gone to one of the following: shareholders, management, suppliers, employees or customers. This Econ 101 point is perhaps best reflected by Greg Mankiw’s argument that “a corporation is not really a taxpayer at all. It is more like a tax collector.” The implication is that the individual tax code is fundamentally linked to the corporate side, especially if one prioritizes economic growth and the design of an efficient tax collection regime. After all, corporate tax revenue is only the third-largest source for the federal government (around 2 percent of GDP), behind the individual income tax (roughly 8 percent of GDP) and the payroll tax (which was about 6.5 percent back in 2006, before the crisis and the temporary rate cuts that were subsequently used for stimulus). A related point is that since the last tax overhaul in 1986, there has been a tremendous increase in the utilization of pass-through entities (i.e., LLCs and partnerships). Today, the U.S. has one of the world’s largest non-corporate sectors, with pass-through entities in recent years accounting for around 40 percent of total business net income.
Taxing savings and investment. The 2012 election is shaping up to mirror many aspects of the tax debate from 2003-2004. In 2003, President Bush advocated making dividends tax exempt if they were paid out of income that had already been taxed once at the corporate level. The law Congress ultimately passed brought the dividend rate down to 15 percent (the same rate as for capital gains). With personal tax rates on both forms of after-tax corporate income set at the same rate, a company could prioritize its business plan over tax management when deciding whether to retain or reinvest profits, distribute money as dividends, or pursue a stock buy-back. The arguments in favor of lower tax rates on capital generally follow the logic that the double (or higher) tax ends up distorting various investment- or savings-related decisions. From an economic-efficiency perspective, individuals and businesses should be encouraged to build resources and then be left to make the decision on their own whether to deploy their capital so as to maximize productivity and wage growth. Under the current tax regime, the government effectively has its foot on the scale by providing preferences for certain industries and biasing an investor’s decision-making process. (See an op-ed by Greg Mankiw for more.) The counterarguments are usually focused on issues of fairness. Critics are right to point out that the rich (and middle class) are initially the largest beneficiaries of low taxes on investment and savings, but this is because generally the poor don’t own equities that can appreciate or issue dividends. In part at least, this is why the 2004 Democratic nominee, Sen. John Kerry, decided to run on a platform that included repeal of the lower tax rate for dividends.
Fast-forward to today, when President Obama’s new proposals and rhetoric are laying the groundwork for a return to ’04 themes. From 2009 to 2011, President Obama advocated raising the tax rate on dividends from 15 percent to 20 percent. This February, the President decided to break firmly from his previous and more moderate position, proposing to tax dividends back at the personal income tax rate of 39.6 percent. Once you add in the phaseout for deductions and exemptions, and the surcharge from the big health law, the total personal rate settles in at 44.8 percent. If the corporate rate stays at 35 percent for next year, this means the total tax on earnings passed through as dividends would be 64.1 percent. The bottom-line is that a major theme of the general election will be how best to tax savings and investment while balancing fairness and economic growth. (For more on capital gains, go here.)
When taken together, these three issues are set to shift the tax debate toward alternative proposals that rely on taxing consumption. The pivot away from discussing taxes on income and toward consumption is a logical extension of the current corporate tax debate. The more you cut back deductions and broaden the base, the more the current corporate tax regime will resemble a consumption tax. In many respects, a value-added tax (VAT) is the same as a corporate tax where the only allowable deduction is for the cost of inputs (i.e., materials for production or manufacturing). Put another way, corporations are taxed on sales minus deductions today. If most or all deductions are eliminated, then just sales are left. At the risk of oversimplifying, all that really separates the corporate income tax from a sales tax are the current deductions and credits.
So we impose a VAT tax. Prices go up, spending goes down.
How exactly does that help?
from MediaFile:
Content everywhere? More like content nowhere
Will Big Media and Big Tech companies ever stop punishing their biggest fans?
Like many people, I woke up yesterday and reached for my iPad for my morning hit of news, entertainment and information, so I could start my day. (And like many, I’m embarrassed to admit it.) Padding to the front door to get a newspaper still sounds more respectable, but my iPad gives me a far more current, rich and satisfying media experience than a still-warm printed Times could ever produce.
Except, lately, it doesn’t. Yesterday morning, I saw the exciting news that Bill Simmons, ESPN’s most popular, profane and controversial writer, had secured an interview with President Obama. Simmons published his interview in podcast, text and video form on Grantland, a longform sports journalism website he founded last year under the ESPN umbrella. I clicked over to the story from my Twitter feed and saw three YouTube excerpts of Simmons with Obama. And that’s all I saw. When I hit play on the videos, I discovered ESPN had set them to be “unavailable” on mobile devices.
Moving on, I tried to read a New York Post headline that also found its way into my Twitter feed. But when I tapped in, the Post webpage that loaded was not the story I wanted to read. Instead it was a notice, which I took as an admonition, that to read New York Post content on an iPad, I would have to download the app, which retails for $1.99.
I want to make it clear that I’m not against paying for content. But what I’ve just described aren’t paywalls, where publications warn users that they won’t be able to consume content for free.
The situations I’m describing are blanket denials of content because of a choice I made about which device to use. With these tactics, media companies aren’t creating content paywalls, they’re creating content ghettos. Big Media, set my content free! Stop messing with the user experience to deny readers their content simply because you can detect what platform they’re on. And stop punishing users who are investing in the latest devices to consume your output. In other words, grant my hyper-advanced iOS device or my friend’s fancy new Android phone just as much access to the Web as my mother’s four-year-old Windows XP PC. Which one of us do you think wants to watch Simmons talk crossover dribbles with the Commander-in-Chief?
A good deal for Greece, its creditors, and Europe
Amid all the doom and gloom about Greece in the last few weeks, it is easy to overlook an important piece of good news: the debt exchange offer published by Greece on Friday with endorsement by its main private and official creditors. If implemented, this would be a major achievement and an important step toward overcoming the euro zone crisis, almost regardless of what happens next.
Under the offer, bondholders would receive 15 percent of the face value of their bonds in the form of short-term European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) bonds, plus a set of new Greek sovereign bonds maturing between 2023 and 2042, with a 31.5 percent face value.
This agreement is a very good deal for Greece. The combination of the cut in face values, lower coupons and (in most cases) longer maturity implies a debt reduction of about 60 percent in present value terms (evaluated at a 5 percent discount rate). Assuming high participation (about €200 billion in bonds), this translates into savings of about €120 billion, or 54 percent of Greece’s 2011 GDP. This is very large. By comparison, the Argentine exchange of January 2005, the previous high-water mark, generated present value of debt relief of only about 29 percent of GDP, because although the per-dollar debt reduction was higher, the volume exchanged was much smaller.
Private creditors are also getting a good deal. Although they are being hit hard, they could have done much worse. You will see claims that the “haircut” suffered by creditors is on the order of 75 percent. These are exaggerated, because they compare the present value of the new bonds with the face value of the old bonds. But in a pre-default debt exchange, creditors never have the right to full immediate repayment. They only have the right to keep their old bonds and expect them to be serviced.
A better way to determine the value of the new bonds is to compare them with the present value of the old bonds, assuming they both are subject to the same default risk. This leads to a haircut of about 65 percent — much less than what creditors would have lost in a disorderly default. And it does not reflect two additional benefits: “GDP warrants” that may deliver extra payments beginning in 2015, depending on the level of Greece’s GDP; and an effective upgrade in creditors’ rights compared with those of the old bonds. The new bonds will be issued under English law, making them harder to restructure again in the future, and their repayments will be linked to repayments to the EFSF.
Finally, the agreement is a good deal for Europe — not because it guarantees a good outcome, but because it takes some really bad outcomes off the table. The risks of the new EU-IMF package for Greece are well-known: It assumes a large and protracted reform effort in an economically depressed country where both politicians and the “troika” are deeply unpopular and social tensions are high and rising. And even if the debt exchange is successful, Greek debt will remain very high. Yet the proposed debt exchange and the program that underlies it differ fundamentally from previous instances of “kicking the can down the road.”
Take the worst-case scenario: Following the debt exchange, the program goes offtrack in just a few months, and Greece is cut off from any further borrowing. This would aggravate Greece’s economic downturn and force it into even more austerity to avoid running a primary deficit. But it would no longer lead to a catastrophe. Assuming high participation in the exchange, Greece would face almost no net debt repayments in 2012 and just €1.25 billion in interest payments on the new bonds in 2013. Hence, it would not need to default, let alone leave the euro. Furthermore, Greece would no longer represent a contagion threat, and with a recapitalized banking system, and little or no remaining government deficit, it could likely manage its crisis on its own — at least until large repayments to official creditors begin to fall due in 2014.
I bet the Trojans thought the same thing when the wily Greeks gave them a going away present in the form of a horse.
The communist on J. Edgar Hoover’s payroll
This is an excerpt from Enemies: A History of the FBI, published this month by Random House.
J. Edgar Hoover’s most valued secret agent was a Russian Jew named Morris Childs. The operation the FBI built on his work was code-named SOLO. It posed great risks and the promise of greater rewards.
The FBI’s first debriefings of Childs were declassified in August 2011. They illuminate several mysteries of the Cold War, including the origins of Hoover’s hatred for Martin Luther King, the reasons for Dwight Eisenhower’s failure to approve the CIA’s plans to invade Fidel Castro’s Cuba, and the beginnings of Richard Nixon’s thoughts about a détente with the Soviets.
Morris Childs was an important figure in the Communist Party of the United States in the 1930s and 1940s, serving as the editor of its newspaper, the Daily Worker. He had fallen out with the Party in 1948. Three years later, the FBI approached him as part of a new program called TOPLEV, in which FBI agents tried to talk top-level Communist Party members and officials into becoming informants.
Childs became a Communist for the FBI. He rejoined the Party and rose higher and higher in its secret hierarchy. In the summer of 1957, the Party’s leaders proposed that he serve as their international emissary in an effort to reestablish direct political and financial ties with the Kremlin. If Moscow approved, Childs would be reporting to Hoover as the foreign secretary of the Communist Party of the United States.
The FBI’s intelligence chief, Al Belmont, could barely contain his excitement. If the operation worked, he told Hoover, “it would enhance tremendously the Bureau’s prestige as an intelligence agency.”
On April 24, 1958, Childs boarded TWA Flight 824 to Paris, on the first leg of his long trip to Moscow, at the invitation of the Kremlin. He met the Party’s leaders over the course of eight weeks. He learned that his next stop would be Beijing. On July 6, he had an audience with Chairman Mao Tse-tung. Was the United States planning to go to war in Southeast Asia? Mao asked. If so, China intended to fight to the death, as it had during the Korean War. “There may be many Koreas in Asia,” Mao predicted.
The role of the Communist Party in furthering Martin Luther King’s career and the civil rights movement is generally unacknowledged in the United States. Although the topic came up repeatedly in the 1960′s it was widely regarded as a paranoid smear fomented by right-wing racist groups. As it happens, they were on to something although the facts were unknown to them.
At the very time that the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China were imprisoning dissidents and their own human rights activists, and China was on the verge of starving perhaps 50 million of their own citizens, American Communists were happily chattering about the “negro struggle” and ending segregation. They were less interested in these movements as a force for increased civil rights than as a tool for civil turmoil and their usefulness in promoting a Marxist revolution in the United States.
At the time of his assassination King himself was beginning the process of coming out as a Marxist in his own style, although there is no evidence that had anything to do with the killing. Many of his close confederates like Stanley Levinson and Hunter Pitts O’Dell, both closely associated with the CPUSA, had been working to influence King for many years. The anti-war demonstrations and radical student movement were helping to convince him that the time had come.
The late 1960s were a period ripe with possibilities for increased violence and civil disorder. Had Martin Luther King lived the American civil rights movement may have taken the form of an insurgent class warfare movement. His death and the widespread reaction to the riots that followed had a tempering effect on the radicalization of the movement. Formal Marxist sentiment faded outside of small radical circles on college campuses where it still festers to this day.
The workplace’s new normal
Each year for International Women’s Day, a U.N.-designated holiday celebrated on Mar. 8, Accenture, a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, conducts external global research that investigates the workplace and careers and what women and men around the world have to say about them. This year, possibly more than in any of the eight years we’ve conducted the research, respondents’ beliefs about careers and work-life balance paint a picture of change and a movement to a new normal in the workplace.
Accenture’s research was conducted via an online survey of 3,900 business executives from midsize to large organizations in 31 countries. Respondents were split evenly by gender and were balanced by age and level in their organizations. The margin of error for the total sample was approximately plus or minus 2 percent. You can see the report here.
Accenture found that more than half of both the women and men surveyed (57 percent and 59 percent, respectively) said they are dissatisfied with their jobs, but more than two-thirds (69 percent) of the same respondents said they plan to stay with their current employers. What that means: The workforce is dissatisfied, yet stable. That presents an opportunity for companies to better support their employees by offering career advancement, more flexible work schedules, and new skill acquisition and training in the workplace. Unhappy employees aren’t looking to leave — that’s a bit of knowledge companies can use.
There are some key findings that companies should consider as they work to retain their employees. For example, 71 percent of people we surveyed said they have work-life balance most or all of the time, while 41 percent said that career demands have a negative impact on their family life. So, people’s work is impinging on their lives, but they don’t think their work is overwhelming their personal life — these seem in opposition. But when you consider that more than half of the respondents have some type of flexible work schedule, and 44 percent of this group has had a flex schedule for more than three years, it begins to make a bit more sense. Also, 64 percent of those surveyed say flexible work arrangements are a reason they are staying in their jobs.
When asked about the greatest barrier to career advancement, almost half said it was a lack of opportunity or a clear career path. On the other hand, a third said there are no barriers to their advancement, and only 20 percent said family responsibilities are a barrier.
The word “opportunity” continues to stand out for me in these findings. People want opportunity. They want opportunity for growth, opportunity for flexibility and the opportunity to integrate a career and a family life. And they are dissatisfied without it.
The best employees to have are those that can work anywhere, but choose to work at your company. That should be the goal of all leaders. Times might be tough now, but when things change – and they will- you hardly want all your IP walking out the door!
How Apple, and everyone, can solve the sweatshop problem
Every few years brings us another sweatshop offender. In the 1990s it was Disney, and then Nike and Gap. The 2000s brought us Wal-Mart. The past few weeks Apple has been in the crosshairs.
One question is of paramount importance: How can we use this current public conversation to finally drive a different outcome? What must companies do so that 15 years after Kathie Lee Gifford tearfully became the first sweatshop poster child, workers who make and grow products for global consumers are paid fairly, protected from danger and free to advocate for themselves without fear of reprisal?
The good news is that these years of effort have created robust experience from which to identify what has gone wrong. The fundamental driver of “sweatshops” is that multinationals do not place value on good working conditions in their supply chains. This does not mean that a company doesn’t care about how those workers are treated, or that the company intends to act unethically or exploitatively. To the contrary, big companies require good conditions through vendor standards and “codes of conduct.” They build corporate responsibility departments whose staff have budgets to reduce the risk of bad working conditions at supplier factories and farms. But their work is much like the arcade game Whac-A-Mole: A problem arises in one factory that they take steps to fix, while other problems fester and ultimately break through the surface elsewhere.
For this to change, companies have to resolve the ways in which their business decisions actually drive irresponsible performance among their suppliers. Companies frequently speak with two voices when they talk to suppliers. Procurement officers responsible for ordering something from a supplier expect delivery of a quality good at a cheap price on a tight time frame. Corporate responsibility professionals embody the expectations that all those other business needs will be met, but in a responsible manner. Yet that responsibility gets ignored when a company makes last-minute design changes or increases order size. The supplier will still deliver a quality product on time, but will do so by keeping his employees at work overnight or for days on end. Without the ability to negotiate a higher price at the last minute, the supplier can’t pay the workers for their overtime without taking a loss himself. Thus responsibility is sacrificed by a company’s business decisions.
Instead, companies must learn to speak to their suppliers with one voice and reinforce that voice with action. Suppliers should get positive incentives in the form of higher prices, financial bonuses, long-term contracts or other benefits for maintaining good working conditions. In-house procurement and supply chain staff should be compensated more highly if they place orders with responsible suppliers. Taking these steps would allow businesses to integrate social responsibility with other business requirements like quality, price and delivery.
Workers must be part of this conversation as well. Line workers and harvesters are the best source of information about working conditions, no matter the industry. Only a worker can tell corporations with accuracy whether or not she is being paid according to her contract, whether she considers her work hours to be excessive, whether she is provided with drinking water and toilets during her long days, and whether she has been harassed or fired for “associating freely” by joining a union. By working with trade unions and NGOs, companies will learn what the reality is at their suppliers, providing an early warning when things go awry and a constituency that can help improve conditions.
To hold themselves accountable, companies need to communicate publicly what has changed as a result of their social responsibility efforts. Our recent survey of corporate responsibility reports captures a mind-numbing array of activities, but no analysis of what has been achieved. To its credit, Apple has demonstrated that communicating achievement is possible. The company remains the only multinational to quantify the impact of its supply chain social responsibility in dollar value for workers — disclosing that $6.7 million was returned to migrant workers who had been overcharged by unscrupulous labor contractors. This kind of disclosure leaves no doubt about its impact and stands in contrast to the usual corporate responsibility communication.
@oneofthesheep- Re-read that sentence, adjusting where you pause for the commas.
Monetizing the marginalized
Five years ago, Ron Paul’s popularity was still surprising. Sometime in 2007, the former physician, longtime crank in Congress, and thoroughly fringe Republican had somehow turned his shtick into success — at least monetarily. Paul raised more than $31 million in the 2008 Republican primary even though he never actually won a contest where actual delegates were at stake. For a longshot like Paul, it wasn’t the chance of his success that drove people to donate; on the contrary, all but the deluded knew he would fail.
Now, in 2012, the idea of his success among the fringe is mainstream. And Paul’s alchemy — turning derision into dollars — isn’t exclusive to his corner of the fringe. The powers that be — politics, media, Corporate America — have refused to embrace causes from Occupy Wall Street to Elizabeth Warren. And yet these underdogs still find a way to succeed because marginalization has become incredibly lucrative. How else to explain the $150 million that the DIY funding site Kickstarter is expected to help raise this year, even though many of the projects it funds will do no better than Ron Paul?
As always, credit the Internet. Since the earliest days of altnet message boards, we’ve known the Web can build just as well as it can destroy. Its vastness allows for connections both obscure and passionate, while its anonymity creates hate both entropic and cowardly. This new economy of the marginalized is the child of the first dynamic — the one that can rally thousands to a cause with the smallest of sparks.
In the past, the spark has been all that was necessary, especially in politics. Remember when Joe Wilson yelled “You Lie!” to President Obama at the State of the Union in 2009? Until then Wilson had been a meek Republican congressman best known for his determination to support Strom Thurmond and keep the Confederate flag flying at the South Carolina statehouse. The media made him into a symbol of all that was wrong with Washington. Just as quickly, supporters made him — or his campaign war chest — rich. He raised $2 million in the week after the State of the Union. The Washington Post dubbed it, and every other controversial sound bite that takes on a life of its own, a moneyblurt.
But this most recent crop of marginalized parties is taking part in a more nuanced process than Wilson. These parties have used more than just controversy to raise money. They’ve used the promise of reversal.
Clay Shirky, the author-thinker-smart guy who spends more time pondering the Internet than you do surfing it, told me it takes two things for a mass, financial mobilization: coordination and leverage. On the Internet, plenty of groups can gather en masse. But they won’t be moved to act, let alone donate, unless they think their support is actually going to do something. Shirky points out, for example, that there are plenty of people who want to legalize marijuana, but all their efforts have been focused on changing state law. They know there’s no use pouring their money into a national campaign if the White House isn’t going to acknowledge their issue.
I’m not sure that the ability to donate a few dollars to some “longtime crank in Congress” or to some quasi-charity has improved the conditions of the “marginalized”.
Far more likely, the internet has become yet another device to fleece the unwary by making them think their opinion (and money) matters.
