Editorial voices from elsewhere
Editorial voices from newspapers around the United States:
We all know times change.
Ours used to be an agrarian economy. Then an industrial economy. And now a technological and service economy.
These evolutions are driven by visionaries who invented steam engines, locomotives, telegraphs and telephones, automobiles, assembly lines, aircraft, radio and television, computers, 3D printers and a million other things that have changed life in ways that had not been imagined.
American manufacturing wages average $26 an hour, while those in China and Mexico are $2 or $3 per hour. Any tariff high enough to offset that difference would do more to drive up prices on imported goods and start a trade war than return to the United States jobs that already have been lost.
And for the blue-collar worker, things are going to get worse. Technology is coming for a whole new group of workers, and virtually no one is talking about it. Through three presidential debates, no moderator and neither candidate brought it up. We’re talking about jobs in transportation and delivery – jobs that today pay well, but will begin to disappear as nascent technology matures.
Two weeks ago, a tractor-trailer rig outfitted with Uber technology delivered a load of 50,000 cans of Budweiser across 120 miles of Colorado highways. A driver got the big rig onto the interstate and then sat back and did nothing for the rest of the trip.
Millions of jobs on which today’s families rely are going to disappear, some within the next few years. Now is the time to start talking about this next wave of job losses and what it will do to the economy.
If you thought the most exorbitant golden parachutes were limited to the private sector – Wall Street or the pharmaceutical giants – you’d be wrong.
A recent USA Today survey revealed the highest paid public employees also have the most lucrative buyouts if dismissed – major college football coaches.
While they don’t rank with the severance pay record – $140 million for former superagent Michael Ovitz when he was ousted as Walt Disney boss after only 14 months – or even the reported $61 million Mylan Pharmaceuticals President Heather Bresch reportedly would walk away with if ousted – the figures are still impressive.
Seven coaches could exit with buyouts of more than $20 million. If Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz is fired after this season, he would be owed more than $25 million payable in monthly installments until 2026.
Rather than share with the academic side of the house – and rumor has it public colleges are primarily taxpayer-supported educational institutions – athletic departments have engaged in an arms race involving coaches salaries, practice facilities, dormitories and stadium luxury boxes.
At some point university presidents must quit acting like fanboys and bring fiscal sanity back to the college sports scene.
If you believe that our presidential campaign was strange beyond all compare, that it was a singularly odd bit of political theater, like nothing before and (hopefully) like nothing ahead, then you’ve likely not been following the doings in Iceland.
There, a bunch of pirates just got themselves elected to the world’s oldest parliament. Really.
The Pirate Party, a collection of anarchists and hackers, had been expected to perform very well in Saturday’s balloting. Some pre-election polls even had the Pirates coming out on top. And while that did not come to pass, the most-unlikely group managed to garner about 15 percent of the vote, placing it third, ahead of four other parties.
Whether the Pirates wind up being part of a governing coalition is still to be determined. Whether the Pirates grow in numbers, and power, or eventually just fade away, is also still to be determined. But they are on the job at the moment.