Friedman: It’s a 401(k) World

[IDemo]

It’s hard to have a conversation today with any worker, teacher, student or boss who doesn’t tell you some version of this: More things seem to be changing in my world than ever before, but I can’t quite put my finger on it, let alone know how to adapt. So let me try to put my finger on it: We now live in a 401(k) world — a world of defined contributions, not defined benefits — where everyone needs to pass the bar exam and no one can escape the most e-mailed list.

Here is what I mean: Something really big happened in the world’s wiring in the last decade, but it was obscured by the financial crisis and post-9/11. We went from a connected world to a hyperconnected world. I’m always struck that Facebook, Twitter, 4G, iPhones, iPads, high-speech broadband, ubiquitous wireless and Web-enabled cellphones, the cloud, Big Data, cellphone apps and Skype did not exist or were in their infancy a decade ago when I wrote a book called “The World Is Flat.” All of that came since then, and the combination of these tools of connectivity and creativity has created a global education, commercial, communication and innovation platform on which more people can start stuff, collaborate on stuff, learn stuff, make stuff (and destroy stuff) with more other people than ever before.

What’s exciting is that this platform empowers individuals to access learning, retrain, engage in commerce, seek or advertise a job, invent, invest and crowd source — all online. But this huge expansion in an individual’s ability to do all these things comes with one big difference: more now rests on you.

If you are self-motivated, wow, this world is tailored for you. The boundaries are all gone. But if you’re not self-motivated, this world will be a challenge because the walls, ceilings and floors that protected people are also disappearing. That is what I mean when I say “it is a 401(k) world.” Government will do less for you. Companies will do less for you. Unions can do less for you. There will be fewer limits, but also fewer guarantees. Your specific contribution will define your specific benefits much more. Just showing up will not cut it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/01/opinion/friedman-its-a-401k-world.html?_r=0

[Ed Suspicious]

1. Another neo-lib globalist reminiscing about how he got his in this meritocracy. mt

[byeya]

2. Another bullshit billionaire scold giving life lessons to his inferiors.

[BeyondGeography]

3. Oh, it's Tommy from La La Land again

The NYT just earned $3 million in profit on $459 million in revenue, posting declines in print and digital advertising.

You guys are going downhill, Tom. Do you have a motivational problem? That scary world you're writing about? You dodged the bullet, man. Your younger colleagues? Not so much. You've made millions, have all the retirement bennies an army could ask for, and lived a life that won't be available to your successors. Party on, postwar old media lottery winning dude. Just don't tell me about motivation.

[bemildred]

4. Just another six months ...

This sure looks like the same old bullshit to me ...

[Dawson Leery]

5. Tommy married into his fortune.

[closeupready]

6. Move over, Maureen Dowd - you've met your match here.

[Marr]

7. Friedman is a great example of how

our media works when amplifying and spreading messages. His arguments are always pure sophistry, and demonstrably untrue-- but that doesn't matter. The right people *want* to believe the idea he's selling, so he always has a home in corporate media.

Exactly the same thing that was laid bare recently with the flawed research of those two Harvard economists who were selling austerity. Yes, the data was garbage and the methodology broken, but that didn't matter. They arrived at the conclusion that the 1% wanted to hear, so they were suddenly the experts.

[Yavin4]

11. Reminds me of a great joke

A CEO is interviewing three applicants for VP of Accouting.


CEO: What's 1+1?
1st Applicant: Uh..2.
CEO: Thanks for coming in.

CEO: What's 1+1?
2nd Applicant: Two, sir!
CEO: Thanks for coming in.

CEO: What's 1+1?
3rd Applicant: What do you want it to be, sir?
CEO: You're hired!

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

8. "Your specific contribution will define your specific benefits" FAIL

There's no correlation to executive pay and performance or value added. It's win more when the company crumbles, and win even more still when the company "succeeds" (= pleases stockholders while weakening the relative, long-term viability of the entity).

Executives never lose.

[HughBeaumont]

9. Tommy Bucksbaum, the Most Average Kept-Man Writer In America: "Average is Over!"

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/opinion/friedman-average-is-over.html?src=me&ref=general

In the past, workers with average skills, doing an average job, could earn an average lifestyle. But, today, average is officially over. Being average just won’t earn you what it used to. It can’t when so many more employers have so much more access to so much more above average cheap foreign labor, cheap robotics, cheap software, cheap automation and cheap genius. Therefore, everyone needs to find their extra — their unique value contribution that makes them stand out in whatever is their field of employment. Average is over.

Yes, new technology has been eating jobs forever, and always will. As they say, if horses could have voted, there never would have been cars. But there’s been an acceleration. As Davidson notes, “In the 10 years ending in 2009, factories shed workers so fast that they erased almost all the gains of the previous 70 years; roughly one out of every three manufacturing jobs — about 6 million in total — disappeared.”

snip

What the iPad won’t do in an above average way a Chinese worker will. Consider this paragraph from Sunday’s terrific article in The Times by Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher about why Apple does so much of its manufacturing in China: “Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly-line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight. A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day. ‘The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,’ the executive said. ‘There’s no American plant that can match that.’ ”

Hear that? It's BREATHtaking!!!

He's cheerleading executives that liken militaristic gross servitude in the name of winner take everything capitalism as they would describing a Van Eyck painting.

Oh, here's some hilarity if you have the time:

http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/20111022

If there were ever a definition of "uncomfortable", it's Tommy Bucksbaum desperately trying to tackle a non-American journalist's (meaning, one who doesn't take marching orders from the network to lob Tommy fawning softballs) questions on the losers of globalization/offshoring and how it affects America's workers. It doesn't do Tommy's silly theories, his praising of destructive economic practices or his idiotic word-salad metaphors any favors.

Oh, and he really . . . REALLLLLLLLLLY doesn't like his personal wealth being called out.

[dawg]

10. Yes, and it's a disaster.

I don't see how anyone but the very wealthiest will ever be able to retire.

[CBHagman]

12. Friedman admits he finds it all "scary."

That's too mild a word. It's a cruel system that ignores history, to say nothing of practical realities. In this world it's always been possible to work hard and lose everything, or be destroyed by the system.

With the 20th century, industrialized societies reduced some of that risk, though not nearly enough, at least in the case of the United States, and indeed in the late 20th century and early 21st many of the advances were undone.

[Yavin4]

14. Precisely. Through the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there were a lot of boom and bust

cycles. The worst coming in the 1930s. The entire world was poor and extremist ideologies and leaders littered the entire globe. After WWII, the U.S., Canada, Japan, and Western Europe learned that in order to avoid extremist ideologies and leaders, it would be best to offer the people some protections from the vagaries of capitalism.

State pensions, social security, unemployment benefits, single payer health care, public education, social welfare, etc. all offered a measure of protection from the bust cycles that are common with capitalism. In exchange, Western Europe has been at peace with each other for decades, and Japan has been docile since WWII.

[lumberjack_jeff]

13. Dogs.

Fuck Friedman.

[Johonny]

15. Friedman thinks he's a Pig

but then again don't most Dogs.