Category: Labor Economics

Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists “Fantasize about Relocating” to “Detroit and South Bend”

(p. B1) It was pitched as a kind of Rust Belt safari — a chance for Silicon Valley investors to meet local officials and look for promising start-ups in overlooked areas of the country.
But a funny thing happened: By the end of the tour, the coastal elites had caught the heartland bug. Several used Zillow, the real estate app, to gawk at the availability of cheap homes in cities like Detroit and South Bend and fantasize about relocating there. They marveled at how even old-line manufacturing cities now offer a convincing simulacrum of coastal life, complete with artisanal soap stores and farm-to-table restaurants.
. . .
(p. B4) Mr. McKenna, who owns a house in Miami in addition to his home in San Francisco, told me that his travels outside the Bay Area had opened his eyes to a world beyond the tech bubble.
“Every single person in San Francisco is talking about the same things, whether it’s ‘I hate Trump’ or ‘I’m going to do blockchain and Bitcoin,'” he said. “It’s the worst part of the social network.”
. . .
Recently, Peter Thiel, the President Trump-supporting billionaire investor and Facebook board member, became Silicon Valley’s highest-profile defector when he reportedly told people close to him that he was moving to Los Angeles full-time, and relocating his personal investment funds there. (Founders Fund and Mithril Capital, two other firms started by Mr. Thiel, will remain in the Bay Area.) Mr. Thiel reportedly considered San Francisco’s progressive culture “toxic,” and sought out a city with more intellectual diversity.
Mr. Thiel’s criticisms were echoed by Michael Moritz, the billionaire founder of Sequoia Capital. In a recent Financial Times op-ed, Mr. Moritz argued that Silicon Valley had become slow and spoiled by its success, and that “soul-sapping discussions” about politics and social injustice had distracted tech companies from the work of innovation.
Complaints about Silicon Valley insularity are as old as the Valley itself. Jim Clark, the co-founder of Netscape, famously decamped for Florida during the first dot-com era, complaining about high taxes and expensive real estate. Steve Case, the founder of AOL, has pledged to invest mostly in start-ups outside the Bay Area, saying that “we’ve probably hit peak Silicon Valley.”
. . .
This isn’t a full-blown exodus yet. But in the last three months of 2017, San Francisco lost more residents to outward migration than any other city in the country, according to data from Redfin, the real estate website. A recent survey by Edelman, the public relations firm, found that 49 percent of Bay Area residents, and 58 percent of Bay Area millennials, were considering moving away. And a sharp increase in people moving out of the Bay Area has led to a shortage of moving vans. (According to local news reports, renting a U-Haul for a one-way trip from San Jose to Las Vegas now costs roughly $2,000, compared with just $100 for a truck going the other direction.)

For the full commentary, see:
Kevin Roose. “THE SHIFT; Silicon Valley Toured the Heartland and Fell in Love.” The New York Times (Monday, March 5, 2018): B1 & B4.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date March 4, 2018, and has the title “THE SHIFT; Silicon Valley Is Over, Says Silicon Valley.”)

“The Future Is Rich in Opportunity”

(p. A13) Ken Langone, 82, investor, philanthropist and founder of Home Depot, has written an autobiography that actually conveys the excitement of business–of starting an enterprise that creates a job that creates a family, of the joy of the deal and the place of imagination in the making of a career. Its hokey and ebullient name is “I Love Capitalism” which I think makes his stand clear.
. . .
Can capitalism win the future? “Yes, but we have to be more emphatic and forthright about what it is and its benefits. A rising tide does lift boats.”
Home Depot has changed lives. “We have 400,000 people who work there, and we’ve never once paid anybody minimum wage.” Three thousand employees “came to work for us fresh out of high school, didn’t go to college, pushing carts in the parking lot. All 3,000 are multimillionaires. Salary, stock, a stock savings plan.”
Mr. Langone came up in the middle of the 20th century–the golden age of American capitalism. Does his example still pertain to the 21st? Yes, he says emphatically: “The future is rich in opportunity.” To see it, look for it. For instance: “Look, people are living longer. They’re living more vibrant lives, more productive. This is an opportunity to accommodate the needs of older people. Better products, cheaper prices–help them get what they need!”
Mr. Langone grew up in blue-collar Long Island, N.Y. Neither parent finished high school. His father was a plumber who was poor at business; his mother worked in the school cafeteria. They lived paycheck to paycheck. He was a lousy student but he had one big thing going for him: “I loved making money.” He got his first job at 11 and often worked two at a time–paperboy, butcher-shop boy, caddie, lawn work, Bohack grocery clerk. He didn’t mind: “I wanted to be rich.”

For the full commentary, see:
Peggy Noonan. “DECLARATIONS; Wisdom of a Non-Idiot Billionaire.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, May 12, 2018): A13.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date May 10, 2018.)

The book mentioned in the commentary, is:
Langone, Ken. I Love Capitalism!: An American Story. New York: Portfolio, 2018.

Blockchain May Enable “Consent-Based Ad Models”

(p. A13) Internet advertising started simply, but over time organically evolved a mess of middle players and congealed into a surveillance economy. Today, between end users, publishers and advertisers stand a throng of agencies, trading desks, demand side platforms, network exchanges and yield optimizers. Intermediaries track users in an attempt to improve revenue.
It’s an inevitable consequence of such a system that users end up treated as a resource to be exploited. When you visit the celebrity website TMZ, for instance, you face as many as 124 trackers, according to a Crownpeak test. Your data is stored and profiled to retarget promotions that shadow you around the Internet. You become the product. Some claim your data is not “sold,” but access is certainly rented out.
. . .
For a solution, look to blockchain technology. More than a word peppering earnings calls, it can deliver the change brands, publishers and users need. Put simply, it’s an immutable database that records transactions and produces trustworthy data.
In advertising, blockchain’s reliable data can radically shrink the ad-tech blob and provide the foundation for consent-based ad models. Improved blockchain reporting and transparency would obviate much of the need for companies focused on measurement, verification and even some data suppliers. Companies like Brave are using blockchain to build software that allows for more-direct relationships between advertisers and publishers, as it was before the blob. (Earlier this month Brave announced a partnership with Dow Jones Media Group, a division of this newspaper’s parent company.) Anonymous data on the blockchain or on a device can even replace the need for the mining of individual user data. Users should be compensated for their attention and seen as customers again.
The internet need not be characterized by predation and parasitism. It can once again be a place of infinite possibility. Innovation got us into this situation; it can get us out.

For the full commentary, see:
Brendan Eichand and Brian Brown. “The Internet’s ‘Original Sin’ Endangers More Than Privacy.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, April 28, 2018): A13.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date April 27, 2018.)

Paying Consumers for Their Data

(p. B4) WASHINGTON–For every link you click, every photo you post, every word you search, somebody markets the data to advertisers seeking to target you. Consumer data is a valuable commodity, and that is one reason Google, Facebook and others let you use their platforms at no cost.
An Australian app maker called Unlockd thinks it has a better idea: The consumer should get a cut of this mobile-data business, in the form of rewards or other incentives. Other newcomers and smaller firms are taking a similar tack. Should this approach take off, some see it becoming a viable alternative to the ad model driving big platforms like Alphabet Inc.’s Google.

For the full story, see:
McKinnon, John D. “Startup Wants to Reward Your Clicking.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, May 10, 2018): B4.

(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 9, 2018, and has the title “Startup Takes on Google With a New Approach: Rewards for Users.”)

San Francisco Suffers Net Loss of People as Tech Booms

(p. A3) San Francisco is such a boomtown that people are leaving in droves.
In 2016 and 2017, more people moved out of the San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward metropolitan area–an urban core of 4.7 million people in a broader region known as the Bay Area–than moved into it from other parts of California or the U.S., according to U.S. census data.
In the year that ended July 1, the region showed a net loss of nearly 24,000 residents to the rest of the country, roughly double the loss of the previous year and a sharp reversal from net annual gains of about 15,000 as recently as 2013-14.
Economists said the outflow is being driven by the high cost of housing in the area, where the average home value in several counties surpasses $1 million.

For the full story, see:
Nour Malas and Paul Overberg. “‘San Francisco’s Boom Leads to an Exodus.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, March 23, 2018): A3.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 22, 2018, and has the title “San Francisco Has a People Problem.”)

More Firms Educate In-House

(p. B5) . . . Atlanta-based aluminum-products maker Novelis started a school within the company to impart lessons pulled from the factory floor with a faculty and nine “deans” to oversee it.
Federal policy for decades has pushed more people to go to four-year colleges, promoting a college-preparatory high-school curriculum and easing access to student loans. But technology is changing faster than colleges can keep up and employers say too many schools aren’t teaching students the skills they need–or even basic critical thinking.
With the labor market the tightest it has been in a generation, this misalignment is causing big–and expensive–headaches for employers. So companies are increasingly taking matters into their own hands. Major employers like CVS Health Corp., Novelis, International Business Machines Corp., Aon PLC and JPMorgan Chase & Co. are hiring workers because of what they can do, or what the company believes they can teach them, instead of the degrees they hold.

For the full story, see:
Douglas Belkin. “‘Education Is Moving to the Factory Floor.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, March 23, 2018): B5.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 22, 2018.)

“Wilson’s Betrayal of Black Americans”

(p. C6) Instead of “The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made,” Patricia O’Toole could have titled her new book “The Hypocrite.”
After all, as she herself points out, to lay claim to the moral high ground as often and as fervently as President Wilson did during his eight years in the White House was to court charges that he failed to live up to his own principles. He called for an end to secret treaties while negotiating secretly with the Allies in World War I. He declared himself unwilling to compromise with belligerents abroad while showing himself very willing to compromise with segregationists at home. He pursued a progressive economic agenda while approving a regressive racial one. He spoke of national self-determination in the loftiest terms while initiating the American occupation of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
. . .
“The Moralist” suggests that Wilson’s betrayal of black Americans was born from simple expedience — that he allowed the segregation of the Civil Service because he desperately needed the votes of Southern congressmen in order to pass his progressive economic agenda, including the introduction of a federal income tax.
“He knew the segregation was morally indefensible, but ending it would have cost him the votes of every Southerner in Congress,” O’Toole writes.
The second part of her sentence is largely correct, but how can she be so sure about the first? As evidence she cites Wilson’s own pleas to his critics. “I am in a cruel position,” he told the chairman of the N.A.A.C.P., insisting he was “at heart working for these people.” The testy exchange apparently left Wilson so rattled he took to his bed for a week.
But as O’Toole herself shows, his cries of political constraints were later followed by his claims that politics were irrelevant to racism anyway. In 1914, Wilson told the African-American editor William Monroe Trotter that eliminating segregation wouldn’t do anything for racial animus, which he called “a human problem, not a political problem.” (Wilson took to his bed after that “bruising quarrel” with Trotter, too.).

For the full review, see:
Jennifer Szalai. “BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Woodrow Wilson’s Flawed Idealism.” The New York Times (Wednesday, May 2, 2018): C6.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date May 1, 2018, and has the title “BOOKS OF THE TIMES; In ‘The Moralist,’ Woodrow Wilson and the Hazards of Idealism.”)

The book under review, is:
O’Toole, Patricia. The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018.

California Regulation Adds $9,500 to Average Home Cost

(p. A1) The California Energy Commission voted 5-0 to approve a mandate that residential buildings up to three stories high, including single-family homes and condos, be built with solar installations starting in 2020.
The commission estimates that the move, along with other (p. A2) energy-efficiency requirements, would add $9,500 to the average cost of building a home in California. The state is already one of the most expensive housing markets in the country, with a median price of nearly $565,000 for a single-family home, according to the California Association of Realtors.

For the full story, see:
Erin Ailworth. “Solar Panel Mandate Jolts Housing Industry.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, May 10, 2018): A1-A2.

(Note: the online version of the story was updated May 9, 2018, and has the title “California Takes Big Step to Require Solar on New Homes.”)

Robots Free Humans for More and Better Jobs

(p. A8) For companies, choosing the appropriate tasks to automate is important. Auto maker BMW AG automated some of the physical labor at the Spartanburg plant in South Carolina while retaining tasks involving judgment and quality control for workers.
Robots fit black, soundproofing rubber tubes to the inner rim of car doors, a task once done entirely by hand, on the more than 5,000 or so car doors that pass through the production line each day. Human workers do final checks on the tube’s placement. The division of labor speeds up the process.
Since BMW introduced this and other automated processes over the past decade, it has more than doubled its annual car production at Spartanburg to more than 400,000. The workforce has risen from 4,200 workers to 10,000, and they handle vastly more complex autos–cars that once had 3,000 parts now have 15,000.
Being spared strenuous activities gives workers the time and energy to tackle more demanding and creative tasks, BMW said in a statement.
James Bessen, an economist who teaches at Boston University School of Law, said automation like that at the Spartanburg plant has enabled a huge increase in the quality and variety of products, which help spur consumer demand. BMW’s share of luxury-car sales in the U.S. has risen sharply, with over 300,000 cars sold last year compared with just over 120,000 in 1997, company figures show.
Tesla Inc., by contrast, has struggled with production of the Model 3 car at its Fremont, Calif., plant after its use of robots got out of balance. Undetected errors in parts built by robots caused bottlenecks in production, meaning it could build only 2,020 cars a week compared with the 5,000 it originally promised, according to the company.
Analysts at investment research firm Bernstein said Tesla automated welding, paint and body work processes, as other manufacturers have done, but also automated final assembly work, in which parts, seats and the engine are installed in the car’s painted shell. Errors in this work caused production bottlenecks. “Automation in final assembly doesn’t work,” said analyst Max Warburton.
“Yes, excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake…Humans are underrated,” wrote Tesla CEO Elon Musk in a tweet last month.
. . .
At an aggregate level, however, the jobs created by automation outnumber those that are being destroyed, according to analysis by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s David Autor and Utrecht University’s Anna Salomons.

For the full story, see:
William Wilkes. “Big Companies Fine-Tune The Robot Revolution.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, May 15, 2018): A1 & A8.
(Note: ellipsis between paragraphs, added; ellipsis internal to paragraph, in original.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 14, 2018, and has the title “How the World’s Biggest Companies Are Fine-Tuning the Robot Revolution.”)

More of James Bessen’s views on these issues, can be found in his discussion of ATMs in:
Bessen, James. Learning by Doing: The Real Connection between Innovation, Wages, and Wealth. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015.

The analysis by Autor and Salomons, mentioned above, appears in:
Autor, David, and Anna Salomons. “Is Automation Labor-Displacing? Productivity Growth, Employment, and the Labor Share.” In Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Feb. 27, 2018.

Finnish Public Push to End Universal Basic Income Experiment

(p. B1) LONDON — For more than a year, Finland has been testing the proposition that the best way to lift economic fortunes may be the simplest: Hand out money without rules or restrictions on how people use it.
The experiment with so-called universal basic income has captured global attention as a potentially promising way to restore economic security at a time of worry about inequality and automation.
Now, the experiment is ending. The Finnish government has opted not to continue financing it past this year, a reflection of public discomfort with the idea of dispensing government largess free of requirements that its recipients seek work.

For the full story, see:
Peter S. Goodman. “Finland Will Stop Offering Unconditional Pay for Jobless.” The New York Times (Wednesday, April 25, 2018): B1 & B4.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 24, 2018, and has the title “Finland Has Second Thoughts About Giving Free Money to Jobless People.” The print version cited above is the National Edition.)

Spreadsheets Created More and Better Jobs Than They Destroyed

BookkeepingVersusAnalystJobsGraph2018-05-19.jpgSource of graph: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A2) Whether truck drivers or marketing executives, all workers consider intelligence intrinsic to how they do their jobs. No wonder the rise of “artificial intelligence” is uniquely terrifying. From Stephen Hawking to Elon Musk, we are told almost daily our jobs will soon be done more cheaply by AI.
. . .
Until the 1980s, manipulating large quantities of data–for example, calculating how higher interest rates changed a company’s future profits–was time-consuming and error-prone. Then along came personal computers and spreadsheet programs VisiCalc in 1979, Lotus 1-2-3 in 1983 and Microsoft Excel a few years later. Suddenly, you could change one number–say, this year’s rent–and instantly recalculate costs, revenues and profits years into the future. This simplified routine bookkeeping while making many tasks possible, such as modeling alternate scenarios.
. . .
The new technology pummeled demand for bookkeepers: their ranks have shrunk 44% from two million in 1985, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Yet people who could run numbers on the new software became hot commodities. Since 1985, the ranks of accountants and auditors have grown 41%, to 1.8 million, while financial managers and management analysts, which the BLS didn’t even track before 1983, have nearly quadrupled to 2.1 million.

For the full commentary, see:
Greg Ip. “CAPITAL ACCOUNT; We Survived Spreadsheets; We’ll Survive AI.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, August 3, 2017): A2.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary was updated Aug. 2, 2017, and has the title “CAPITAL ACCOUNT; We Survived Spreadsheets, and We’ll Survive AI.”)