05.04.12
From the economy that produces nothing…
Still collapsing job markets include lousy minimum pay work at big box retail stores because nobody’s buying except the halves. Also, lousy minimum and sub-minimum pay work in childcare has been hurt. Economic collapse has forced families to rely on grandparents who do it for free. Or they can do it themselves because someone in the family has been de-jobbed again.
Also, gambling is off. Because the gambler cohort, those that go to Atlantic City on the party bus for the weekend, have been hit hard by firings. Plus, having seen their wages compressed and the cost of living escalate by a few inches, they’ve lost even the little gold they formerly threw away at casinos.
Hospitality work is also not happening. Because that Discover America dog I mentioned last weekend just won’t hunt.
These quotes are bleakly humorous, but not intentionally so:
“The gambling industry is not showing much growth,??? says Gregg Mulholland, analyst with Sageworks, a financial information company. A spokeswoman for the American Gaming Association — which represents casinos and, therefore, only one-third of the amusement and gaming sector — says employment was largely flat …
With childcare costs increasing and income growth stagnant, more grandparents have stepped in to look after young children – roughly 40% to 60% of those living within 30 minutes of their grandchildren now provide some care …
Worth special mention is Apple. No one ever mentions how much job loss Apple is responsible for in this country — and I’m not speaking of the iStuff manufacturing sent to China — but the employment destroyed because of the ubiquity of GarageBand and similar things.
Now you may think the wide distribution of cheap digital recording software has been a boon. Think a little more deeply about it and consider how well served society is when everyone who can make music, but maybe shouldn’t, does it anyway.
The software contributed to a radical devaluation, not only of the making of music, but also in any employment associated with it, transferring what was left of the spoil, to Apple.
So while there has been much demonstrable creative destruction, the creative replacement of that which was ruined with compensating value has been much harder to categorize.
The salient graph:
Jobs in motion picture and recording have remained stagnant over the last three months, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The slowdown in hiring is partly seasonal, as some of TV shows end their productions this time of year, says producer Jonathan Taplin, a member of the Academy of Motion Picture, Arts and Sciences. Digital music recording equipment like Pro Tools and Apple’s software package GarageBand, which was launched by Apple in 2004, have also replaced some studio jobs in the music industry, he says. “Digital technology is pretty much killing the standalone recording studio business,??? says Taplin, who is also director of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab, an arts and media research group. “Every band has much higher quality tools on a Mac than we had with 24-track tape in the 1970s or even five years ago …”
Fuck the guy from USC, I’m using recording software I bought well over five years ago. On a PC, not a Mac.
What might have been more perceptive an observation is that each copy of Apple’s Final Cut Pro video-making software transfers a substantial amount of money to Apple without enabling many sucked into buying it to recoup their investment. Because the economy now dictates that all video and music be free.
Unless you siphon it though Apple iTunes and pay an enabler site to put it there. Then somebody gets theirs, it’s just not you. The enabler and Apple divide your tithe right before they plant you way out back and six feet under in the vast on-line digital market.
If Apple and the technologies of creative destruction give the working majority any more help like this — well, most just won’t need it ever again.
Done without Apple’s “help.”
“We are facing a very difficult transition from manufacturing to a service economy. We have failed to manage that transition smoothly. If we don’t correct that mistake, we will pay a very high price. Already, the average American is suffering from the failed transition.” — Joseph Stiglitz, economist and Nobel laureate.
Christoph Hechl said,
May 6, 2012 at 9:52 pm
I know that Macs are more common in the US, than in the rest of the world. But Final Cut Pro has always been a niche product, because the big names in video editing are Avid, Letsedit and Magix, all PC-products.
Somehow the old IT-joke seems more and more appropriate:
Macs weren’t made to get work done – thats why PR companies use them.
George Smith said,
May 7, 2012 at 7:34 am
I tried Avid for awhile. It was pretty horrendous for what I was doing. The software, me and the machine just didn’t work well together. It had a couple peculiar bugs that made it annoying on my platform.
The larger issue is the passing off of high cost creative production software in the US, which -becomes- the focus of economic activity, at the cost of whatever pennies you could get from being creative. Now art has always been a tough avenue but Apple, after being completely on the ropes, was able to take mediocre products and siphon the entire entertainment industry through them in the US.
Is iTunes better than the old recording industry/major label structure? You could make a good case against it, particularly now the cat’s out of the bag on Apple routing it through Luxembourg, a country that has an economy only because of its ‘product’ for corporate tax cheats, to chisel even more for itself.
How is that different from old greedy record labels? Well, it’s not. At least the old labels invested in artists and development for short periods of time. Now even that’s largely gone.
Christoph Hechl said,
May 7, 2012 at 7:56 am
Well Luxembourgs border is about 50km away from where i sit now and i have been there pretty often. There is a heavy emphasis on the banking sector , but they have quite a remarkable steel and mining industry as well. The granite rock they have there is notorious for grinding away excavator equipment.
Not a big population, very high average per-head-income – lots of small companies just over the border in France, Belgium and Germany work for customers in Luxembourg. And of course the current head of the EU comission is Mr. Juncker from Luxembourg, a very respected man.
It isn’t quite so unimportant a country.
oh and btw: Luxembourg also houses the european base for Paypal, but that is of course almost natural.