Creative Class

Jeff Madrick writes:

When wages don’t rise ordinary people borrow to keep their heads
above water, not because they’ve caught luxury fever. The foundation of
this economy became private debt …  But the genuine foundation of this economy is the people’s
education, their health, their transportation network, and, frankly,
their sense of fairness … When Wall Street bankers make so much by creating the conditions
that lead to crisis, does America have confidence the economy is
working right? They don’t. Do they have a sense it’s fair? No, because
it’s not.

We were in Valencia last week for an event on the New Urban Culture. The city is glorious. The mixture of historic architecture, stunning Calatrava buildings and an incredible waterfront is intoxicating.  Right now the city is in the midst of a debate over how to redevelop that waterfront.  On the one side are those that would like to make it into a Monte Carlo sort of place - with a private water-front oriented to America’s Cup races and other events. On the other are those who would like to see the waterfront be developed as a public asset with a mix of housing, retail, commercial and public use development.

Here’s an interview I did with El Pais, Spain’s leading newspaper (in Spanish).

Christopher Caldwell writing in the New York Times Magazine:

Why do presidential candidates touting their
concern for the economy pose with factory workers rather than with
ballet troupes? After all, the U.S. now has more choreographers
(16,340) than metal-casters (14,880), according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
More people make their livings shuffling and dealing cards in  casinos
(82,960) than running lathes (65,840), and there are almost three times
as many security guards (1,004,130) as machinists (385,690). Whereas 30
percent of Americans worked in manufacturing in 1950, fewer than 15
percent do now. The economy as politicians present it is a folkloric
thing …

It is that the transition is over. The new economy we have been
promised is in place. …The “jobs of the futureâ€� that were promised 20
years ago are here. Choreographers, blackjack dealers and security
guards have replaced factory workers as the economy’s backbone, if not
yet its symbol. New economies have always required a kind of initiation fee of those who would participate fully in them.

I spoke at the Toronto Board of Trade 120th annual dinner last night - that’s right one-hundred and twentieth. If I was a little bit tired after flying back from Valencia, the energy in the room was infectious. Dr. Draw played a killer electronic violin and Cirque de Soleil was even more amazing to see up-close. Most of all you can feel the city crossing an inflection point around the Prosperity Agenda for a sustainable, inclusive and creative community.

That’s Toronto mayor David Miller, Rana and me. More pics here.

Today, the Lego Brick turns 50! Looking pretty good for something that old. Props to Google for celebrating the event with a special logo.

As something that has triggered almost as much creativity as the crayon and the empty cardboard box, it’s something worthy of a mention on this blog.

Lego factoids:

• There are about 62 LEGO bricks for every one of the world’s 6 billion inhabitants.

• Children around the world spend 5 billion hours a year playing with LEGO bricks.

• More than 400 million people around the world have played with LEGO bricks.

• LEGO bricks are available in 53 different colors.

• 19 billion LEGO elements are produced every year.

• 2.16 million LEGO elements are molded every hour, or 36,000 per minute.

• More than 400 billion LEGO bricks have been produced since 1949.

• Two eight-stud LEGO bricks of the same color can be combined in 24 different ways.

• Three eight-stud bricks can be combined in 1,060 ways

See the full set and a cool Lego timeline here.

posted by Kevin Stolarick

Newhoggers asks an important question:

Can a creative class backed candidate at the national level get beyond
his/her high intensity support and create a majority coalition within
the Democratic Party? Obama is the first Democrat in a competitive
situation to gain a majority of votes, so I think this concern has been
allayed.

Meaning his plurality in South Carolina.

Yes, I agree: He can.  Years ago, John Judis and Ruy Teixeira predicted their emerging Democratic majority based on minority plus creative-class like voters in “ideopolises.”  The book resonated with me - but I could not see how the numbers would add up. What about older independents and Reagan Democrats? These voters, I believe - and still believe - would be hard to bring into such a coalition.  Bill Clinton may say draw the Jesse Jackson comparison. But Obama has shown his ability to draw from a far broader pool of people - pulling in independents and also mobilizing huge turnouts among young, black and educated or creative class voters.  I think with him, and possibly only with him, the math works. Thus less an emerging partisan majority and more an emerging Obama (alternative) majority.

But that still does not alleviate my main worry. I can see how Obama wins the Democratic nomination. But it’s harder to see his road to a victory in the general election. I’m not saying he can’t do it. With the Republicans seemingly and weighed down with the war issue and the electoral mood shifting to both the economy and “change” (read: throw the bums out), he stands his best possible chance this year. The hurdle I see lies in the electoral college.  He needs to swing the swing states and from what I can tell his voters are mighty concentrated geographically.  It’s America’s concentrated and “sorted” political geography that’s the biggest obstacle to an Obama presidency.

Click here to find out.

Those are SAT scores - based on a Facebook analysis (by Virgil Griffith via Tyler Cowen)

Caroline Kennedy in today’s New York Times:

I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father
inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man
who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation
of Americans.

I remember her father’s inspiration - I saw its effect on my own father. Caroline and I are about the same age: I’ve never really felt it.  Her father did this as president, what’s so amazing about Obama is that he is doing this - I hear it all over the world - as a candidate.

Creating good high-paying jobs is a huge issue all over the world. It’s clear that the global economy is dividing employment into what UCLA economist Ed Leamer calls higher-paying “geek” jobs and lower-paying, less secure “grunt” work.  Increasingly, in the advanced economies those grunt jobs are in the service economy.  A key challenge of our time is how to make those service economy jobs better, higher-paying, more creative, and more rewarding jobs.  The Toronto Star’s John Spears reports on my challenge to Toronto’s Prosperity Agenda:

Appearing before the city’s economic development committee to discuss its Agenda for Prosperity, released earlier this month,Florida challenged the common
thinking that counter work in franchise outlets is somehow worthless … In fact, he said, government, business, labour and academic leaders should consider holding a “service summit” to map just such a plan …

“Why can’t we do for those
jobs what we did for my father’s job in a factory?” he asked. “Why
can’t we make those service jobs good, high-paying, secure jobs?” …

“The food cluster is one,” he said. “Everyone knows we have great chefs.
What about the rest of the food chain – the food support worker, the
food preparation workers and the agricultural sector. What about
hotel and retail? If we’re going to do tourism, if we’re going to do
trade, if we’re going to do retail, how do we strengthen that?”