Nine Shift

Unions and Collective Bargaining: Relevant or Obsolete?

Are unions and collective bargaining relevant today, helping society; or are they obsolete, holding back society? 

Here's the answer:
Unions are obsolete, just like every other institution and structure in society. Why?
Because unions and every other institution were created to serve the Industrial Age of the last century, not the Knowledge Society of this century.

So corporations are obsolete, government is obsolete, schools are obsolete, CEOs are obsolete, capitalism and socialism are obsolete, even the church is obsolete.

What will happen:
Either unions transform to become relevant in this century, or they go away.
This is the same choice/reality that every other institution has to address.

To compare today with 100 years ago, Are unions like Sears and schools, transforming themselves into the new century. Or are they like the circus, the Grange and Chautauqua, fading in the new century?  Stay tuned.

Wisconsin Protests: Latest Predictions

My prediction: Wisc Gov Walker wins, Wisconsin loses (more knowledge workers leave the state), other states like Minnesota and Illinois win, Obama's chances in 2012 improve, and the national debate over the future continues.

 

Wisconsin Protests: Latest Analysis

The Wisconsin protests are a wonderful symbolic as well as real battle between the last century and this century.  The battle is more than union versus anti-union.  It is  high school graduates (most Wisconsin people) versus college graduates (60% of state workers).  It is cars versus trains.  It is, most of all, Gen Y versus old people- Baby Boomers.  Here's some of my pictures from the big rally that made national and international news. Click on them to enlarge them.

Pioneering New Seminar for Community College Presidents

A pioneering new seminar for Community College Presidents and other senior administrators premiered this month in Fort Lauderdale.

Security was tight at the new Nine Shift seminar for community college administrators.  Seriously, this was our first seminar with a state trooper stationed outside the meeting room!

We were privileged and honored to have Joanne Jaeger Tomblin, who is not only the President of Southern West Virginia Community & Technical College, but also the First Lady of West Virginia, being married to Governor Tomblin.

The new seminar, which featured 21 Strategic Planning Action Recommendations for Community Colleges, featured a new 21st century mission for community colleges.  The positive reactions and involvement of the participants, attendance, and interaction, was so exciting we are already planning on offering it again February 1-2, 2012.  And the hotel, right on the beach, was exquisite. Tell your college president to be there next year!   Photo: Dr. Tomblin, left, with Lucious Anderson, Vice President of Baltimore City Community College.

When Americans turn away from cars

It will happen around 2015.  Someone so famous and valuable, like Princess Diana, will die in a car crash.  Or maybe it will be a horrific crash, like the 1988 incident in which 24 children died when someone hit their bus.

It will be a turning point. Americans won't be able to stomach the 117 deaths every day  (this is like a commercial airplane crashing every day). 

In Europe, where they have trains, the auto deaths are incredibly low. In U.K. only 2,500 people died in car crashes last year.  The rates are one-third of the U.S. car death rates.  Even in countries like Germany, where almost as many people own cars as in the U.S. 

No wonder the kids call the automobile the deathmobile.

Healthy scepticism of the Internet

Willie is educating me about the 21st century again. Two of his comments point to his very balanced view of the web.  Yes, the web is wonderful.  But it is not infallible or perfect. 

1.What is IRL?
   I had no idea what IRL means.  According to Willie, it means "in real life" and is used by many in his generation.  "If you actually do something, that's IRL," he said with his usual sense of humor.  You can tell he thinks this is a little bit ridiculous, that online communication is a little overhyped.

2.Is that you Drew?
   About ten years ago Willie had an online relationship with another boy named Drew.  Last week he was walking down the street and saw a guy who looked like Drew, whom he had never met in-person.  "Is that you Drew?" he asked the guy, and sure enough, it was Drew.  The web is pretty cool.

Lessons: the web is not perfect, and it is not nor a replacement for physical life.  On the other hand, it is pretty cool, pretty amazing, and wonderful aid to real life.

The intellectual difference between a 2 year and 4 year degree

Here is one measurement of the intellectual value of a 4 year degree over a 2 year degree.

In our pioneering seminar for community college senior administrators, we predicted that community colleges would be offering 4 year degrees by 2020, and that the primary bottom line measure of the college's economic and community value will be the percentage of community residents and workers with a four year, NOT two year, degree.

One college administrator asked us what the intellectual difference is between a person with 2 year versus 4 year degree (There are obvious unemployment and earnings differences).  I did not have a good answer, but my brilliant co-author Julie Coates has found a measurement.

Here's what she found:  "A a 2-year graduate would recognize around 55,000 to 60,000 different words and a 4-year graduate would recognize 70,000 words or more. This is a vocabulary difference of 10,000 words or more." Here's the source. 

Coates elaborates, "One source suggests that college grads know about 20,000 more words than high school graduates.  (50,000 vs 70,000).  This would be consistent with the assertion that students learn around 3000 new words a year on average. From that one could possibly conclude that a high school graduate recognizes about 50,000 words, while a 2-year graduate would recognize around 55,000 to 60,000 words and a 4-year graduate would recognize 70,000 words or more." Photo: Julie (middle) with Beth Cassity, left, of Elizabethtown Community College in Kentucky and Rebecca Riley, Vice President of Lone Star College-Kingwood in Texas, at the pioneering Community College Seminar on Nine Shift.

NineShift Predicts Euro to hit $2 US around 2015

Bucking conventional American "wisdom," NineShift is predicting the Euro will rise around 2015 and hit $2 U.S.

It might then fall back to around $1.75 but it will stay in that range until around 2025, when the United States finally gets its economic act together.

The reason: Europe is building an infrastructure to support the knowledge economic and knowledge society of the 21st century. On the other hand, the United States is not.

Europe is building trains, has health insurance, actually uses the term "knowledge worker," has low defense costs, wastes little in prisons, is safer, people there have a higher savings rate, and they at least have set a direction towards getting more of their young people a four year college degree.

Can Baby Boomers save the Automakers?

The answer is "No." Automakers have no solution for selling cars to Gen Y. So they are stalling and rolling out new ads geared towards the people buying cars today: the Baby Boomers.

NineShifter D.J. Lubic sends us this story.   And you are starting to see old people in TV commercials.

But driving declines after age 65.  So what then automakers?   In 5 years automakers will be in a double bind: boomers cut back on driving and buying cars, and still no progress in selling cars to Gen Y.  Look for a big drop in car sales in about four years. 

Housing Values to Fall

Our latest NineShift prediction is that the overall value of existing housing will fall another 30% by 2020.

This would be a drop of 60% from the pre-recession high of housing values around 2006. Now we have the historical data to back up our prediction.  Robert J. Shiller of Yale University has tracked existing home values back over 100 years.

Between 1911 and 1920 existing home values fell dramatically. The reason? Because 50% of people lived on family farms or in small villages and they moved to big cities.  All those farmhouses and small town homes plunged in value. Many became worthless and were left to decay.

Today the same thing is happening. Young people are moving to dense communities. Suburban home values are declining, and will continue to decline because young people do not want to live in suburbs. Suburbs are too costly in terms of time, waste environmental resources, and are not close to trains and light rail, or shops and stores, or restaurants, or anything.  Suburbs are intentionally far from everything.

That does NOT mean that every existing home will go down in value. This is the overall average.

Now Shiller suggests that World War I caused the decline 100 years ago, but that has no economic rationale or basis. And the U.S. was in the war for only two years, from 1917-1918. And society was growing more prosperous, not less. So his data is superb, his analysis just off-base.