Across the Great Divide

The Russians Love Their Lynyrd Skynyrd, too.

I suppose there is life after Afghanistan. The Soviet Union's nine-year stay ended just over 20 years ago.

The war cost the Soviets about 15,000 lives, and messed up the country's relations with China, the Muslim world and the West, including a trade embargo and boycott of the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow.

They left proclaiming their "internationalist duty" finished and washed their hands of further responsibility for advancing national accord or creation of a broadly based coalition government.

From the looks of the Red Army Chorus singers backing up the Finnish band Leningrad Cowboys, some of them were around in the old days. No question where they'd rather be.

Via WINston smITH (h/t Norwegianity)

What's the Real Cost of All Infrastructure and No People?

Via Streetsblog, a Milwaukee business writer compares his home in Milwaukee with the condo he and his wife own in Spain and finds "all infrastructure — and no people":

What's the cost for living our American way? It's not just the thousands of dollars for the second car, insurance and gas. We also have to support a lake of concrete around us - and gas, electric and sewer lines to stretch out past the near-vacant belts beyond the older suburbs. Property taxes in Almería on our condo are one-twelfth our taxes in Milwaukee, even though the value of the two homes is roughly the same.

One-twelfth. Oh, and they throw in free health insurance.

Kind of flawed tax analysis for a business writer. Spain's national and provincial income tax rates range up to 43% combined, plus a 16% value added tax. But the other differences affecting quality of life are still telling.

Revenge Conservatives and de Facto Americans.

Over the weekend, I spoke with a former diplomat and World Bank type who had lived in Toronto for 20 years. He was lamenting how American ignorance of other cultures and countries made us so susceptible to anecdote-based lies — in this case, about the Canadian national health care system.

I didn't take notes on that conversation, but this post (h/t Hal Davis) from a Canadian centrist built very nicely on the theme (emphasis mine).

It pains me to see my American cousins being denied affordable and effective health care. It pains me even more the reasons it is being denied is a series of grand deceits.

Many conservatives proudly introduce themselves as "fiscal conservatives" as if to imply they have a monopoly on money matters. If they are politically inclined their "expertise" extends to public expenditures. It is mainly conservatives who are telling Americans they cannot afford universal single payer Medicare when the reverse is true America cannot afford to not implement such a program. Many governments learned long ago that the only cost effective way to deliver certain services, specifically Medicare, to the public was through universal programs where the cost was spread over the entire population; in other words a collectivity-or that dreaded word that strikes fear in to the heart of every American-socialism.

This writer has the benefit of our national Medicare plan, a group benefit plan through my employer, and government run universal car insurance. These services become affordable or much more affordable only because a very large number of people make it so by pooling resources. A so-called fiscal conservative who denies the cost benefits and efficiencies of this sort of collectivity denies an immutable truth and one that is ageless.

The idea the private sector provides goods and services more efficiently than government is only one of the big lies of our times- and another of the sins of the revenge conservatives has been to denigrate the role of government to facilitate their greed.

The Sweeper, the Boy and the Bike.

A different bicycle story, from China.

Health Care May Account for Small-Business Disparities Between U.S. and Other Rich Countries.

Credit Lee Egerstrom of MN2020 with finding this study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research that compares U.S. small business employment with that in 20 other rich nations.

By every measure of small business employment, the United States has among the world’s smallest small-business sectors (as a proportion of total national employment). The lower taxes, less stringent regulations, and freer labor markets in the United States, it appears, have not yielded greater small-business employment here than elsewhere.

That's right. Although it's an article of faith in both parties that small businesses fuel America's job creation and innovation, we're worse than an also-ran in the global economy.

The study looked at:

• self-employment (the U.S. has the second lowest share of self-employed workers at 7.2 percent)
• shares of small business employment in manufacturing (only Ireland (9.6 percent) and Luxembourg (8.5 percent) ranked lower than the U.S. (11.1 percent)
• high-tech fields — computer-related services and research and development —where we ranked second- and third-lowest, respectively (Luxembourg spanked us in both categories)
• and lower-tech services (“restaurants, bars, and canteens”; “real estate activities”; and “renting of machinery and equipment etc.”) where we ranked dead last.

One comforting myth is that businesses are started by entrepreneurs with a design for a better mousetrap or maverick employees who wrote a business plan to exploit an opportunity their employer refused to invest in. These start ups will overcome obstacles and grow into healthy, profitable enterprises that provide good jobs and make the world a better place.

The job statistics will tell you that Minnesota’s smallest businesses (with 1-19 employees) account for about one-quarter of all new jobs annually. Even when its job losses are counted, this segment provides a net gain of jobs about equal to the state’s overall private sector job growth.

A lot of these small business simply deliver basic services and provide individuals a way to make a living in an economy that increasingly relies on part time labor and independent contractors. For every long-time mom and pop store or entrepreneur with a dream to build a company, there are several spouses supplementing the household income, displaced executives “consulting” between jobs, and painters, programmers and truck drivers who don’t know who they’ll be working for or what they’ll be making next month.

These may represent "new jobs," but they are hardly an engine of economic growth. Nearly three quarters of "small businesses" in Minnesota do not have employees.

I believe the downsizing and outsourcing by larger corporations is responsible in large part for this “job growth.”

Nearly three quarters of small businesses in Minnesota do not have employees. Most of these business owners will tell you the biggest decision they face is whether to hire some help; most never will. The second biggest is whether to offer "benefits" — which means health care and a 401(k) plan.

By outsourcing more work to small businesses, corporations can effectively buy the services without incurring the obligation to provide benefits. We've seen this gambit occur also in the retail sector, where employers use part-time work as a way of avoiding providing health care and other employee benefits.

The CERP study puts this practice in global perspective. In countries where there's national health care, a real barrier to entrepreneurial growth is removed. People are more likely to start businesses — and hire employees — knowing that health care will not be a cost that constrains their growth.

When I started my business I made an early decision to provide employee benefits that were competitive with what big companies offered — because those were our clients, and we wanted to attract talent that was comparable to what a major corporation would hire. That was the right strategic decision for my business at that time, but I know many start ups and sole proprietors who see health care as a major cost that they can't risk funding.

As Lee Egerstrom says:

Without a universal health care system that moves insurance costs off the backs of doing business, we will continue to thwart entrepreneurial development and we will continue to encourage large manufacturers and service providers to keep out-sourcing and off-shoring work and jobs.

Unless, of course, companies in those more enlightened countries simply take the business away from us.

Water: Simple Solutions to a Basic Problem.

When we built our house in Colorado, we decided putting a cistern under the driveway to cache rainwater was going to cost too much. But it also would have made us lawbreakers.

Harvesting the rainwater that falls on your property is now legal on Colorado.

A study in 2007 proved crucial to convincing Colorado lawmakers that rain catching would not rob water owners of their rights. It found that in an average year, 97 percent of the precipitation that fell in Douglas County, near Denver, never got anywhere near a stream. The water evaporated or was used by plants.

As growth continues in the arid west, water rights will provoke a bigger fight than gay rights.

*****
Elsewhere in the world, access to water may produce greater conflicts than over access to oil. And clean water in third world countries may do more to extend lifespans than vaccinations.

Hal Davis sent me a link to this video awhile back. It shows the winner of the 2008 Innovate or Die design contest sponsored by Google and Specialized bikes.

The Aquaduct, like a Detroit concept car, is slick and visionary and so far out of sync with the realities of the market — in this case ensuring clean water in developing countries. They designers say they are "working to evolve the concept into a viable solution," but the hurdles of cost and maintenance seem pretty high.

Segway inventor Dean Kamen has another device he showed on The Colbert Report that uses vapor compression distillation but requires much less power than conventional technology. His solution to the cost problem is micro-capital loans to entrepreneurs who sell water and power in poor communities.

Contrast the Aquaduct solution for transportation with this simple one — and the purification solution with this very low-tech one.

Personally, I can see the entry from Mayapedal working better with the bikes and conditions I've seen.

*****
And one last related bike link. It looks to me like George is going all right with his current can-hauler.

Could the Nanny State Actually Make Us Safer on the Roads?

The World Health Organization has published a study that found traffic accidents were the 10th-leading cause of death in the world in 2004 — and were growing at a rate that would place road deaths 5th by 2030.

But that's not even the surprising part. 

Pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcycle riders accounted for 46 percent of all worldwide traffic deaths. Most of these deaths occur in low- and moderate-income countries, where automobile registrations are much lower than in developed countries, but the rate of deaths as a percent of the population is higher. Low-income countries, including most of sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, have only 9 percent of the world's cars but almost 42 percent of the traffic deaths. 

In the U.S. [Download PDF], 24 percent of deaths involve vulnerable road users — 2 percent of fatalities involve cyclists; pedestrians and riders of 2- and 3-wheel motorized vehicles account for 11 percent each. In Thailand [Download PDF], the figure is 81 percent — cyclist fatalities are 3 percent, but the 2- and 3-wheel motorized vehicles account for 70 percent of road deaths. That's about equal with the proportion of registered motor vehicles of that type (63 percent).

In the U.S., 32 percent of road traffic deaths involve alcohol; in Thailand, only 4 percent.

I haven't studied the data enough to have any brilliant insights here. But it looks like one factor in the differences between high-income and low-income countries could be the "nanny state" — which provides has stringent safety and licensing laws, greater enforcement, safer public transportation, better infrastructure and quality emergency care.

Chambers of Communist.

In explaining China's rise and America's decline, historians may well note that capitalism -- American capitalism, anyway -- far from spreading democracy, actually has played a key role in transforming China into an authoritarian superpower. The transfer of manufacturing from the United States to China -- driven by the rise of mega-retailers such as Wal-Mart that have been able to enforce a regime of low wages all along their global supply chains -- has diminished our middle class and expanded theirs. American companies such as Wal-Mart have not been deterred in the slightest by China's authoritarian practices; indeed, before China enacted a law that infinitesimally increased workers' rights last year, the American chambers of commerce in China joined with communist hard-liners in opposing the statute.
— Harold Meyerson, Washington Post

Add another riff to yesterday's on China, democracy and capitalism on the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square uprising.

Meyerson invokes Marx's "the idiocy of rural life"

by which he meant its isolation and its lack of social differentiation, but 20 years ago, it was that very "idiocy" on which the Chinese Communist Party depended to maintain its hold on power.

The urban/rural divide in China is centuries wide. Here, it's wide enough.

[h/t Norwegianity]

Finish the Revolution Without Me.

On the bus ride to Tiananmen Square, our guide James told us how his brother and a cousin went out the night the demonstrations turned deadly. They were teens; James was 11 and stayed home.

His cousin did not come home.

Once we get off the bus, James said, I will lead you through the square and describe its history. Please do not ask me any questions while we are there, because I will not be able to answer them. There may be people in the crowd who look like tourists, listening, but they are agents. Once we are back on the bus, you can ask me any question you want. And do not take pictures of the soldiers. They may take your camera.

So, of course, I contrived to get a picture of the soldiers. A tiny expression of freedom in the place where freedom once meant stepping in front of a tank.

On the surface, it was impossible to tell if the square held any  resonance of democracy for the non-western visitors there. Mao's portrait is still the focal point. Soldiers patrol in a non-threatening, honor guard sort of way. A man and kite merge. Tour guides do not take questions.

Tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of the massacre of hundreds of Chinese citizens by their own army. Things have been changing fast in China, and doubtless have changed since our visit more than three years ago.

But The Economist does not expect much in the way of acknowledgment: "For many in China the nationwide pro-democracy protests of 1989 and their bloody end have become a muddled and half-forgotten tale."

The China Beat offers a different perspective on the silence — that it is neither the result of suppression or fading memories.

Generally, the urban educated today have what they wanted at the time of the Tiananmen protests. They feel they can make such recommendations and that their expertise is respected. They and their children also now have their personal space, in the shape of access to websites, chat rooms, and a wide variety of publications and films. They can say what they want so long as they stay within increasingly generous boundaries and do not challenge the Party’s political monopoly.

Above all, in their material livelihoods the urban educated are doing very well, whereas at the time of the Tiananmen protests in 1989, they had good reason to be angry. Their salaries were low, and sour jokes circulated about private barbers earning more with their razors than hospital surgeons with their scalpels. But in the years since, there has been a deliberate government policy to favor the well-educated. Year after year the professionals on government payrolls have been offered repeatedly higher salaries. During one year in the late 1990s, the pay of all of the academics at China’s most prestigious public universities was literally doubled in one go. Opportunities to earn high salaries opened up just as much in the private sector. Many of the university students at Tiananmen Square in 1989 now drive cars and live in fancy high-rise apartments. They have gained a lifestyle that they had never imagined possible, and they do not want to upset the apple cart. If the government’s plan was to co-opt the salaried middle class, it has worked.

Reflecting on the Tiananmen protests, one of the most famous of the student leaders, Wuer Kaixi, flippantly articulated their desires, “So what do we want? Nike shoes. Lots of free time to take our girlfriends to a bar. The freedom to discuss an issue with someone. And to get a little respect from society.” They now have all that, in spades.

As a result, the members of the educated middle class, including many of the former university students who crowded Tiananmen Square two decades ago, have become a bulwark of the current regime. Summarizing a large survey of political attitudes in Beijing, a recent book concludes that, among all urban groups, “those who perceive themselves to belong to the middle class and who are government bureaucrats are more likely to support the incumbent authorities.” If there is another outbreak like Tiananmen, in fact, many of them might prefer to be on the government side of the barricades.

In this land where our former revolutionaries become stock brokers, college professors and community theater matrons, why should we be surprised?

The Special Barbie Issue.

Barbie turns 50 in March, and she rates a big photo spread in today's Strib, to which the online version simply doesn't do justice.

This month, Barbie stories also twice festooned the Business section, a film preview, and an AP story with a dream house angle, Plus, a call to ban Barbie arrived right on schedule to help promote Barbie's big 5-0.

Regular readers will note that I have a special and long-standing relationship with Barbie and will not stoop hype her and leave her.

I would be remiss, however, if I did not mention the ethnocentrism in this celebration. Barbie's influence extends even to the Muslim world, where Fulla shows little girls how they can indulge their wholesome fantasies in private before venturing out into the world, ever so modestly, to smell the flowers.
[h/t Deanette]