Monthly Archives: November 2015

Why Asian Americans Are Such Loyal Democrats?

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“In just two decades, Asian-American support for the Democratic presidential candidate more than doubled, from the 31 percent Bill Clinton got in 1992 to the 73 percent cast for President Obama in 2012, according to exit polls.”

Asian-Americans, according to the Pew Research Center, “are the best-educated, highest-income, fastest-growing race group in the country.”

In 2014, median household income for Asian-Americans was $74,297; for whites, $60,256; for Hispanics, $42,491; and for African-Americans, $35,398.

 

Three out of five in the Asian-American work force have a college degree, compared with 37 percent of whites, 27 percent of African-Americans and 18 percent of Hispanics. Fifty percent of Asian-Americans have managerial or professional jobs, compared with 39 percent of whites, 29 percent of African-Americans and 20 percent of Hispanics.

Asian-Americans also stand apart from other Americans of all races and ethnicities in family structure. The percent of out-of-wedlock births among Asian-Americas in 2013 was 17 percent, just over half the 29.3 percent rate for whites and far below the 53.2 rate for Hispanics and the 71.5 percent rate for African-Americans.

The work ethic is robust among Asian-Americans, who believe by 42 points (69-27) that “most people can get ahead if they’re willing to work hard.” Among all American adults, it’s a much smaller 18 points (58-40).”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/04/opinion/why-are-asian-americans-such-loyal-democrats.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

posted by f.sheikh

Religious Arbitration In Business Contracts Replacing USA Laws

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“Businesses and organizations can compel their customers and employees to resolve disputes in arbitration proceedings bound not by state or federal law, but by religious edict.”

“Customers who buy bamboo floors from Higuera Hardwoods in Washington State must take any dispute before a Christian arbitrator, according to the company’s website. Carolina Cabin Rentals, which rents high-end vacation properties in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, tells its customers that disputes may be resolved according to biblical principles. The same goes for contestants in a fishing tournament in Hawaii.”

“Pamela Prescott battled for years to prove that she had been unjustly fired from a private school in Louisiana. The crux of her case — which wound through arbitration, a federal appeals court and state court — was references in her employment contract to verses from the Bible.

In legal circles, those cases, along with the Ellison suit, are considered seminal examples of how judges have consistently upheld religious arbitrations over secular objections. They also reflect a battle in the United States over religious freedom, a series of skirmishes that include a Kentucky clerk’s refusal to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples and a Muslim woman’s being passed over for a job at Abercrombie & Fitch because she wore a head scarf.”

“More than anything, the cases show the power of arbitration clauses. An investigation by The New York Times found that companies have used the clauses to create an alternate system of justice. Americans are being forced out of court and into arbitration for everything from botched home renovations to medical malpractice.

By adding a religious component, companies are taking the privatization of justice a step further. Proponents of religious arbitration said the process allowed people of faith to work out problems using shared values, achieving not just a settlement but often reconciliation.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/business/dealbook/in-religious-arbitration-scripture-is-the-rule-of-law.html?emc=eta1

posted by f. Sheikh

A cursed song?- Insha Ji Utho Ab Kooch Karo

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Ibne Insha was a nifty character. Poet, diplomat, author and a Marxist. However, he was mostly known for his poems that he regularly published in compilations and literary magazines.

There is one poem that he penned in the early 1970s that greatly heightened reputation. It was called Insha ji Utho (Get up, Insha).

The poem is about a melancholic man, who, after spending the night at a gathering (most probably at a brothel), suddenly decides to get up and leave — not just the place, but the city itself.

Is it the power of poetry that makes the song of death or is it just a coincidence?

He walks back to his house and reaches it in the wee hours of the morning. He wonders what excuse he will give to his beloved. He’s a misunderstood man looking for meaning in (what he believes) is a meaningless existence.

Ibne Insha

(Ibne Insha)

The poem soon caught the interest of famous Eastern classical and ghazal singer, Amanat Ali Khan.

Amanat was looking for words that would depict the pathos of urban life (in Karachi and Lahore).

Someone handed him Ibne Insha’s Insha ji Utho and Amanat immediately expressed his desire to sing it.

He met Ibne Insha and demonstrated how he planned to sing the ghazal. Insha was impressed by the way Amanat actually transfigured himself into becoming just like the forlorn protagonist of the poem.

http://www.dawn.com/news/1216462/the-cursed-song

posted by f sheikh

‘Losing Middle Class Jobs and Owning Technology’ By Dean Baker

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Is lengthy intellectual property protection the main culprit for loss of the middle class jobs? It is a thought provoking article shared by Zafar Khizer. 

A widely held view of the economy is that technology is destroying middle class jobs. The argument is that we use to have all these relatively high paying jobs in manufacturing and other sectors requiring routinized work, which are now being displaced by machines, or in the near future, robots. Pretty soon robots will also be driving our cars, busses, and trucks, as the technology for self-driving vehicles becomes cost efficient.

The result of the loss of these jobs is supposed to be a shortage of jobs for workers without sophisticated skills. This means that more workers will be fighting for a rapidly shrinking number of jobs, leading to more unemployment and underemployment and lower pay. On the other hand, the folks who develop and therefore own the technology will be getting rich.

That sounds like a pretty bad story, at least from the standpoint of inequality. The loss of middle class jobs means that fewer people will be in a position where they can comfortably raise a family. From this perspective, we may try to redistribute income to help out the losers, but the underlying problem is technology, and no one wants to try to stop the development of technology.

The evidence for this story is actually quite weak. Productivity growth has been very slow in recent years, the exact opposite of robots taking all our jobs. Also,the data contradict the story of disappearing middle class jobs, as opposed to weak job growth overall. But the basic theory behind the argument is even weaker. The problem with the theory is that government policy, not technology, determines what it means to “own” the technology.

This point should be straightforward. Technology is simply knowledge. No one inherently owns knowledge. The government gives ownership of technology through patent or copyright monopolies or other forms of intellectual property. These monopolies allow individuals or corporations to sue anyone who uses technology without their permission. Patent infringers can pay large fines and even face jail if they persist.

It is this protection that allows those with sophisticated skills to get rich from technology. It is not the technology itself. If we envision robots doing everything in a world without intellectual property, then robots would be incredibly cheap. After all, robots will be producing robots. Robots will be making and driving the trucks that deliver robots, as well as loading and unloaded the trucks.

This means that for a few dollars we should all be able to buy ourselves robots that will clean our house, wash our clothes, cook our meals, mow our loans, and do any other necessary task that we would rather not do ourselves. They should even be able to grow fruit and vegetables for us in our backyard.

In this story, because everything is now so cheap, real wages might skyrocket. We all should be able to put in just a few hours of work a week or month to pay for our robots which will then take care of just about all of our needs.

But the folks arguing that technology will increase inequality obviously have a different vision of the future. They expect that we will have long and strong intellectual property laws that will allow them to charge high prices for the robots and thereby makes lots of money for themselves. And, they actively work to ensure that we have strong protection for intellectual property.

We have been treated to an excellent example of such efforts in the final negotiating rounds for the Trans-Pacific Partnership. According to news accounts, one of the last major sticking points was the number of years that pharmaceutical companies could claim for exclusive control over the test data they used to establish a drug’s safety and effectiveness. The United States insisted on the longest possible period. Another sticking point was that the United States insistence that the other TPP countries extend the length of copyright monopolies to 70 years.

In both of these cases the explicit intent is to redistribute money from the bulk of the population to those who own these intellectual property rights. Of course this redistribution is justified with an argument about incentives, but that doesn’t change the fact that is an upward redistribution of income engineered by the government.

http://www.cepr.net/publications/op-eds-columns/losing-middle-class-jobs-and-owning-technology

posted by f. sheikh