Yesterday I was sitting in class and this woman decided to eat her dinner while we were there. She had a huge roast beef hoagie, a bowl of grapes, cookies, and some sort of tea. She was as big as a house and the amount of food was incredible. The hoagie was so big that she would shake when she opened her mouth in order to eat it. The quivering was not from excitement, but she had to stretch her jaw more than was naturally allowed in order to get her lips around it. I think it took her about 3.5 minutes to eat the entire thing.
Carl Williams ¡Presente!
June 29, 2009Last week one of my best friends over the past two years died. His name was Carl Williams and we met in Ecuador. I met Carl in August of 2007 and him and I became very good friends. He was smart, super funny, and knew more about music than anyone I had met. One of the first trips I had in Ecuador was with him and I made him and his wife stay in this terrible hostel in Sua. There were bugs, it was hot, and the neighbors played Spanish Christian Rock super loud. It was pretty insane indeed.
Carl and I traveled a lot together (along with Lydia and Michele) and he was my best friend for two years. He taught me great things like when it comes to making margaritas it is not about the quality of the tequila, but about the quality of the cointreau. When I heard he died in Ecuador away from his family I was saddened beyond imagination. In light of all of this, one beautiful note is the fact that, his first granddaughter born this Saturday.
The word we give to all fallen comrades I speak to you now sir. Carl Williams ¡Presente!
Sitting on the bus
June 23, 2009I am sitting on the bus on my way to Bloomfield. I am checking out an apartment to rent for after this summer. After this I must go back to Heinz in order to finish my globalization midterm. I have no idea when I am going to finish all of this work.
I think I may work pretty late tonight. I only packed my lunch, so I am going to need to find some dinner at somepoint.
Oh, I also did pretty well on my financial exam I think.
Writing A Paper
June 17, 2009I am writing a paper for my class on Globalization. I am trying to write my first policy paper on Argentina and how organized labor helped rehabilitate it from the punch to the gut liberalization gave that country.
Here is my quick brain storm on the type of research I want to do. We live in a globalized liberal economy. An important feature of free-market liberal economies is to make profit. What tends to cost the most? Wages.
Organized labor has the responsibility to fight for good and high wages for the working class it represents.
HUGE DISCONNECT!
Employers are looking for labor markets that reduce their wage expense, and unions, by their very definition keep wages high. This is a cat and mouse game of tantamount proportions. Wherever the jobs go, unions follow and organize the workforce, and then the employer leaves for a different labor market, and it starts over. Everyone is following their role.
How do we stop this cycle? The obvious is to organize everyone and maintain strength so employers have no place to run, but we all know that is impossible.
The other initiative is for the state to become the employer, we’ve seen this in action, but it was under attack from day one, thus we do not have much solid empirical data. What we do know is that a system like this, that is always defending itself from the capitalist juggernaut, tends toward extreme inefficiency.
I think an answer to the short-term lies somewhere in Argentina. Globalization is here to stay and it doesn’t seem to be disappearing in my lifetime. Argentina decided to go through its liberal transformation and when it did everything fell apart.
I think that liberalization is survivable if a country had a strong organized labor class beforehand that can basically work as intermediaries in the process. We know that when the capitalists were scurrying about what to do during the Argentine Economic crisis the actual factory workers kept industry afloat by taking ownership of these factories and continuing doing work.
Surviving globalization lies somewhere in here. If we must assume the free-market as the path we are on then maybe we can take a lesson from Argentina and make sure organized labor is strong and at the frontline.
