Linkagogo Archive 1: Industry

Showing posts with label Industry. Show all posts

Stephen Hill Linkography: Deutschland

Amazing Germany - Declining Unemployment - How Do They Do It?

Blog: How's Europe Doing – posted 13 Nov 2010 - The Washington Monthly. In Germany, manufacturing still dominates finance. German capitalism didn’t succumb to the financialization that swept the United States and Britain in the 1980s’ - though Germany’s banks and financial sector did get snared in the Wall Street web.

Don't Scorn Germany and Japan; Learn From Them
Article: 29 July 2010 - Los Angeles Times. The global marketplace has become tumultuous, so when we find a bright spot, one would think it deserves a mention: Germany and Japan! Japan's economy has been and remains successful. So is Germany's. They have reached an economic steady state in which they don't need roaring growth rates to provide for their people. But for the economic Cassandras, apparently it doesn't matter if people's needs are being met; what matters is whether their theories and equations balance.

Germany Leads Europe's Wind and Solar
Energy Revolution
Article: 28 October 2008 - cafebabel.com: The European Magazine.

While Bush and other world leaders pitted the environment and energy innovation against the economy and loss of jobs, Europe has discovered that greater energy efficiency actually is good for their economy and businesses. Their efforts led to the rise of new technologies, industries and created tens of thousands of jobs.

Angela Merkel is Getting it Right
Article: 04 October 2010 - IP Global (German Council on Foreign Relations). Chancellor Merkel and French president Nicolas Sarkozy proposed sweeping financial regulatory changes. They warned the Obama administration not to block their attempts to crack down on hedge funds and derivatives, corrupt rating agencies, outrageous bank bonuses and more. Would US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner have dithered even more had he not been pushed – shoved, by the Europeans, led by Merkel?

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Stephen Hill Linkography: U.S. Labor

An Antidote to GATT: Stakeholders vs. Stockholders
Article: Labornet viewpoints: Global online communication for a democratic, independent labor movement. Also posted at: The Humanist, March-April, 1995. With NAFTA behind us and GATT in front of us, it's a sane response for working people to start feeling surrounded. There seems to be little to stop these steamrollers from running us over, as the workers of the world prepare to unite finally -- in the unemployment line. But, Hill points out, there are stubborn pockets of resistance to free trade that have sprung up over the last few years.

Stakeholders vs. Stockholders
Article: 2000, in Labornet viewpoints: Global online communication for a democratic, independent labor movement. Five years on, Hill looks at the enduring legacy of the Pennsylvania law that protects the rights of stakeholders, as opposed to the rights of the stockholders with respect to corporate-community relations. States and communities seeking new strategies to cope with job losses and corporate disinvestment associated with global free trade would do well to understand the opportunities provided by a legal framework solidifying stakeholder rights.

Another Gold Medal For the United States

Article 2000 in Labornet viewpoints: Global online communication for a democratic, independent labor movement reprint from: Dollars & Sense (Newsletter) issue no. 205, 1996 - Economic Affairs Bureau). A global survey was released recently that says that world business leaders give the gold medal to the U.S. economy as the "most competitive" in the world among industrialized nations. What business leaders mean when they say "most competitive" is this: low wages, few worker benefits, and deregulation.

ICANN: the Secret Government of the Internet?
Article: April, 2001 - Labornet viewpoints: Global online communication for a democratic, independent labor movement. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a little-known international body that oversees crucial Internet functions. Depending on whose description you read, ICANN is either an innocuous non-profit with a narrow technical mandate, or the first step in corralling the Internet for commercial and other purposes. And despite the centrality of it's role in the online world, there has been almost no media coverage of ICANN.

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Stephen Hill Linkography: Social Capitalism

Europe's Answer To Wall Street
Article: April 21, 2010 - the Nation. Many European countries have the right institutions to facilitate both a powerful economic engine and the supportive institutions and benefits to harness that engine. Co-determination is one of them. It gives workers in Europe the advantage of electing worker directors that sit side by side as equal decision-makers with stockholder representatives, and supervising management. This is a little-known yet unprecedented extension of democratic principle into the corporate sphere.

Economic Democracy and Codetermination: Harnessing the Capitalist Engine
Book review: Posted Friday, 15 January 2010, on the Globalist (daily online magazine on the global economy, politics and culture). In the aftermath of the economic crisis, the United States needs a new economic model — one that will decentralize power and put it in the hands of the workers. As Steven Hill suggests in this excerpt from his book, Europe's Promise, the United States might have a lesson to learn from post-World War II Germany.

Merry Christmas, From the Government To the Workers -- In France, That Is
Article: 2000, in Labornet viewpoints: Global online communication for a democratic, independent labor movement.

Just a few days before Christmas in 1999, the French government passed a law that was a welcome gift to their workers -- they shortened the legal workweek from 39 hours
to 35. This follows a European trend, where Swedish, German, Italian and soon Belgian and Spanish workers will have seen reductions in their workweek.

The World Cup of Global Competition
Article: July 1998 - Hartford Web Publishing: World History Archives. Steven Hill is in Paris during the 1998 World Cup of soccer hosted in France. Watching Europeans of numerous nationalities patriotically cheering their home teams, he reflects on the remaining barriers to the European Union. Some Europeans are looking westward toward the American model, marked by low unemployment of 4-5%, market and labor flexibility, low deficits and increased worker productivity. However, important distinctions should be noted about U.S. practices.

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Stephen Hill Linkography: Features

Book Review of Europe’s Promise: Why the European Way is the Best Hope in an Insecure Age
Book review: Posted 31 January 2010 on Folkpolitics by the Liberal Arts Dude. (Provides an excellent overview of Europe's Promise.)The reviewer found Hill's book fascinating and recommended that it deserves to be read widely in the United States. More specifically, he suggested that American public policy makers, politicians, pundits, and those who have power to craft public opinion and policy should read it and take a long hard look at American institutions, economic practices, policy-making, etc. and ask themselves –"Are we doing the best job that we can do and getting the results we intended?"

Europe's Promise by Steven Hill
Book review: Posted 10 April 2010 - Will blog for food by John. An excellent book review! So don’t be put off by the blog’s title or the length of the review. John’s style of writing and knowledge of the subject makes this a fascinating read. He agrees with Hill’s assessment of the current situation and goes on to make a number of thought provoking comparisons between the policies of U.S. and European governments (Norway in particular).

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Stephen Hill Linkography: NLRB Reform

Enable Choice on Labor Unions
Special article by Steven Hill and Dmitri Iglitzin : 20 March 2007 – in the Washington Post’s column - Think Tank Town. The top priority of pro-labor members of the United States Congress is passage of the employee Freedom of Choice Act, a law that would make it easier for workers to organize a union in their workplace and negotiate a contract with their employer. This legislation has been the subject of vigorous public debate among labor organizations and business lobbyists, yet it only scratches the surface of a badly needed overhaul of U.S. labor law.

Time For a Tex-Mex Marshall Plan
Article: 23 April 2006 – Washington Post. The bold yet carefully planned E.U. approach to worker migration suggests the direction that policy between

the United States and Mexico should take. To deal
with the situation, the leaders
of the European Union wisely created policies for fostering regional economic and political integration that make efforts
such as the North American Free Trade Agreement look timid and half-hearted by comparison. Increasingly the demands of the global economy will push North American regional integration out of the realm of a shadow economy and flawed free trade agreements.

Look Who's Acting Like the Microsoft of Politics: This Monopoly's Not Even Debatable
Article by Steven Hill & Rob Richie: 11 February 2000 – Chicago Tribune. For the past year we have watched the U.S. government's attempt to apply anti-monopoly laws to the business practices of Microsoft. Ever since the Sherman Antitrust Act was passed a century ago, it has been widely accepted that domination of a market by a handful of private corporations can be bad for business, bad for consumers and bad for the nation.

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