La biga de Bárcenas
El monstre de les galetes
Carn i peix
Es mostren els missatges amb l'etiqueta de comentaris Diaris. Mostrar tots els missatges
Es mostren els missatges amb l'etiqueta de comentaris Diaris. Mostrar tots els missatges
2013/01/17
2012/08/08
Sorbets d'estiu
- Què ha passat?
http://www.tv3.cat/videos/3854910
Em dec fer gran perquè cada vegada trobo més interessant el canal 33. I el programa Singulars d'en Jaume Barberà, fantàstic!
- Què ha de passar?
http://www.ara.cat/economia/BCE-preveu-contraccio-economica-leuro_0_752324880.html
- Una notícia esperançadora
http://www.nwrevistadereus.cat/societat/Els-supermercats-donaran-part-dels-aliments-frescos-que-ja-no-poden-vendre-a-persones-sense-recursos-econ%C3%B2mics/520/
Un exemple d'optimització de recursos, generació de feina, responsabilitat social i bona organització. Tant de bo funcioni i puguin exportar el model a altres indrets!
2012/05/19
Actius de la banca espanyola a juny 2012
Extret de La Vanguardia amb font el Banc d'Espanya (20/05/2011)
En negreta estan els actius que preocupen més a l'estranger:
| TOTAL ACTIUS BANCA ESPANYOLA | 3,438,000 | ||||
| Crèdits en empreses i famílies | 1,763,000 | ||||
| Empreses | 944,000 | ||||
| Crèdits promotors | 298,000 | ||||
| Indústria | 143,000 | ||||
| Construcció | 98,000 | ||||
| Serveis i agricultura | 405,000 | ||||
| Hipoteques compra habitatge | 656,000 | ||||
| Crèdits al consum | 38,000 | ||||
| Altres | 125,000 | ||||
| Crèdits administracions públiques | 91,000 | ||||
| Crèdits a l'exterior | 240,000 | ||||
| Deute públic i privat | 460,000 | ||||
| Tresor i deute autonòmic | 230,000 | ||||
| Bons d'empreses | 90,000 | ||||
| Bons de bancs | 74,000 | ||||
| Bons estrangers | 65,000 | ||||
| Accions i participacions | 261,000 | ||||
| Mercat interbancari | 240,000 | ||||
| D'altres | 383,000 |
En negreta estan els actius que preocupen més a l'estranger:
- Crèdits a promotors. Estan dividits en tòxics i no tòxics (aproximadament la meitat dels actius són tòxics i l'altra meitat no). La banca ha de provisionar tant per aquests actius.
- Tresor i deute autonòmic. L'increment de la prima de risc fa que sigui més complicat per a la banca col·locar aquests actius, a no ser que esperin al venciment on llavors no es comptabilitzerien pèrdues. També hi ha el risc que hi hagi una quita d'aquests actius
- Hipoteques compra habitatge. Amb 4 milions i mig d'aturats, a les institucions anglosaxones els sorprèn que no es considerin actius de risc i que no es prenguin mesures. Actualment entre un 3% i un 5% d'aquests actius són problemàtics.
2012/03/29
Els avantatges de ser tímid a l'empresa
La notícia completa la podeu llegir a La Vanguardia, per exemple.
Bàsicament el que explica és que s'han començat a reivindicar els valors de la timidesa i la discreció a l'empresa. Segons diu, les persones les quals els posseeixen saben escoltar i compten amb la capacitat de reflexionar profundament i evitar la presa de decisions a la primera de canvi.
A més, actualment disposem del correu electrònic i altres eines que ajuden a combatre els inconvenients de ser reservat.
Bàsicament el que explica és que s'han començat a reivindicar els valors de la timidesa i la discreció a l'empresa. Segons diu, les persones les quals els posseeixen saben escoltar i compten amb la capacitat de reflexionar profundament i evitar la presa de decisions a la primera de canvi.
A més, actualment disposem del correu electrònic i altres eines que ajuden a combatre els inconvenients de ser reservat.
2011/06/13
Una altre escrit d'Antoni Puigverd
Publicat a La Vanguardia el dilluns 13 de juny de 2011
Una altra vegada, el Sr. Puigverd ha estat capaç d'escriure en paraules allò que molts pensem i no sabem explicar. Totalment d'acord amb les seves lletres.
Copio el text per si no es pot veure a la web del diari en uns dies.
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Una altra vegada, el Sr. Puigverd ha estat capaç d'escriure en paraules allò que molts pensem i no sabem explicar. Totalment d'acord amb les seves lletres.
Copio el text per si no es pot veure a la web del diari en uns dies.
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En una carta del 20 de mayo, que leo en la edición digital de este diario, el lector Oscar Riu, esperanzado partidario del movimiento de los indignados, lamenta la evaluación que de tal movimiento cree que hemos hecho Quim Monzó y un servidor: "tergiversan y hacen daño a dichas manifestaciones". El lector crítico sostiene su afirmación poniendo en mi boca algo que no dije: "Puigverd hablaba en la radio del carácter casi pueril de las manifestaciones puesto que tenemos una juventud educada en la felicidad, que puede tenerlo todo". Se refiere a la tertulia de Manuel Fuentes de Catalunya Ràdio en la que ni por asomo califiqué de pueril el movimiento de los indignados. Lo que dije es que las nuevas generaciones han sido educadas para la felicidad y que, durante toda su infancia y juventud, han estado sobreprotegidas. Lo que a mi entender explica la indignación de los jóvenes es el contraste entre la hiperprotección recibida y la extrema dureza y desolación que encuentran al salir del caparazón familiar (paro y precariedad). Los jóvenes de hoy han sido literalmente engañados por las generaciones precedentes.
Aunque ya expuse mi opinión sobre los indignados en un artículo anterior, quisiera volver a ellos desde este prisma generacional. Repetiré que el movimiento de los indignados, aunque sobrevalorado por los medios, me parece no sólo explicable, sino también útil. A la espera de próximas actuaciones (eternizándose en las plazas se están convirtiendo en caricatura), el movimiento de los indignados tuvo una impagable virtud: contribuir en plena campaña electoral a desnudar la gastada retórica de los partidos.
La democracia sigue siendo el menos malo de los sistemas conocidos, pero está cada vez más herrumbrosa. Se oxida a pasos agigantados. Unos pocos jefecillos de cada partido controlan la entera democracia gracias al grosero método de las listas cerradas: los diputados son polichinelas en manos de sus mandos. Controlando los partidos, dichos mandos extienden su control a todas las instituciones del Estado. Deciden quién les representa en los medios de comunicación y en las empresas públicas, en las cajas de ahorro autonómicas, en todas partes. También el poder judicial depende de estas cuotas. El margen de influencia popular está, por consiguiente, severamente restringido. Bienintencionados, los que pilotaron la transición otorgaron un poder fuerte a las cúpulas para apuntalar unos partidos que emergían debilitados de la dictadura. Pero pronto quedó claro que el abuso de tal fuerza minaba la democracia: "Quien se mueve, no sale en la foto", dijo un conspicuo jefecillo. Imposible esperar una regeneración interna: los que disfrutan el poder no acostumbran a practicar el harakiri o suicidio ritual.
Por si fuera poco, nuestra democracia ha sufrido en los últimos años otra amputación: los poderes económicos globales, los llamados mercados, pasan por encima de los estados. Ningún poder público puede con ellos. Necesitaríamos un poder, si no global, amplio como el europeo, para domarlos; pero estamos lejos de conseguirlo. De momento, la gente debe obedecer a los mercados (lo vemos estos días en Portugal y Grecia). Da igual lo que opine el ciudadano en las elecciones, el mando lo tiene la economía global. Reducida la democracia por los dos flancos, nuestro régimen no está tan lejos del chino. La ley del mercado decide y los caudillajes partidistas hacen el resto. La diferencia entre los chinos y nosotros es, sin embargo, importante: nuestra libertad de expresión es total. ¿Parece poco? A los que sufrimos la dictadura, la libertad de expresión nos sabe a gloria. Tal como demuestran las acampadas, también es total la libertad de insumisión.
Las generaciones de hoy y de ayer podemos estar de acuerdo en una cosa: el sistema está averiado. Pero sería hipócrita pretender más aproximaciones. Las generaciones maduras han aceptado encantadas, sin apenas rechistar, la primera limitación: el caudillaje en los partidos. Y, mientras el viento de la economía ha hinchado las velas de la prosperidad, también se mostraban encantadas con la economía global (a lo sumo, cierta contestación retórica). Hemos educado a nuestros hijos en el engaño de un bienestar que no podíamos garantizar. Les hemos ocultado el rastro del dolor, les hemos empujado a la fantasía del confort, no les hemos preparado para lo feo, lo malo, lo peor. Los jóvenes se encaran hoy con irritación a los tiempos inciertos, duros, feísimos. Pero no se vislumbra una solución. Muchos partirán hacia latitudes más confortables, otros querrán irse y no podrán.
El conflicto generacional parece inevitable: los padres y abuelos de hoy son responsables, por acción u omisión, de las deudas y problemas que dejan en herencia a los jóvenes. Su indignación debería cuestionarnos. Pero, en lugar de cuestionar, observo grandes complacencias entre mis compañeros de generación. Olvidando lo vivido en estas tres últimas décadas, muchos padres regresan, nostálgicos, a las asambleas universitarias. ¿No será el cariño y apoyo de tantos padres a sus vástagos contestatarios una forma más de paternalismo? ¿Les están empujando, en serio, a una revolución? Una revolución no es enfrentarse al bate de Felip Puig. La revolución es algo muy serio: mucha sangre y crueldad, muchas lágrimas. La revolución es traumática y terrible. ¿Es en esta dirección que los estamos empujando?
2011/05/06
Reflexió
Com va escriure en Xavier Bosch a l'ARA el divendres 6 de maig de 2011, després de la mort del terrorista més buscat per part del país dominador del món mundial en un atac fora del seu territori, i que posteriorment enterraren segons la tradició religiosa del terrorista:
"És la gran paradoxa: cap escrúpol per a un home en vida i tan respecte per a l'home mort. Novament, la doble moral dels hipòcrites."
"És la gran paradoxa: cap escrúpol per a un home en vida i tan respecte per a l'home mort. Novament, la doble moral dels hipòcrites."
2011/03/21
Col·lecció de llibres de matemàtiques del diari El País
A vegades hi ha notícies que em sorprenen positivament.
L'editorial RBA va treure fa un parell d'anys dues col·leccions de llibres de matemàtiques:
A més, a la web del diari, cada setmana es planteja un problema matemàtic amb el que ens podem entretenir una estona.
Enllaços relacionats:
Està bé que de tant en tant surtin coses així!
L'editorial RBA va treure fa un parell d'anys dues col·leccions de llibres de matemàtiques:
- Desafíos matemáticos
- El mundo es matemático
A més, a la web del diari, cada setmana es planteja un problema matemàtic amb el que ens podem entretenir una estona.
Enllaços relacionats:
Està bé que de tant en tant surtin coses així!
2011/01/08
¿No es mucho fracaso?
Com pot ser que el fracàs escolar espanyol sigui molt superior a la mitjana dels països desenvolupats, mentre que els resultats en les proves de competències siguin més o menys similars? No serà que s'està fent alguna cosa malament en els processos d'avaluació?
Un escrit al diari Público del 8 de gener de 2010 ho argumenta amb xifres.
Un escrit al diari Público del 8 de gener de 2010 ho argumenta amb xifres.
2010/12/25
Escrit de Nadal, per Antoni Puigverd
Publicat a "La Vanguardia" el 27 de desembre de 2010. Antoni Puigverd
La Navidad de los muertosEl invierno representa a la muerte, pero empieza con la Navidad, que promete la luz primaveral
Cada año, horas antes de que se ponga el sol y llegue la Nochebuena, acostumbro a salir de paseo por las afueras de Girona siguiendo un camino de tierra del que ya les he hablado otras veces. Dejo atrás la ciudad bordeando el río Onyar, cruzo un pequeño bosque y alcanzo, en los límites del municipio, el aislado vecindario de la Creueta, donde coexisten extrañadamente inmigrantes en pisos arruinados y universitarios en edificios de diseño. Después de salvar un enorme viaducto, el camino cruza el Onyar y atraviesa unos campos amenos en los que, en este húmedo final de año, despunta verdísimo el cereal de invierno.
No sé por qué no encuentro a nadie por el camino en este atardecer navideño. Generalmente, por esta ruta que en antaño fue vía férrea pululan deportistas de toda clase y condición: corredores que sudan la gota gorda, ciclistas tan ensimismados como veloces, mujeres andarinas y dicharacheras, lentos ancianos que sorben la miel del día. En vigilia de la Navidad, sin embargo, los caminos están vacíos, como si el tiempo cotidiano se detuviera y dejara paso a un tiempo más lento y profundo, para el que no valen las acciones normales y corrientes. Cuanto más intenso es, en el vacío de los campos, el ruido de mis pasos, más claramente percibo la presencia de los que me acompañan con pasos invisibles. Algunos de estos pasos son muy sonoros y persistentes (Artur, que murió de cáncer, como mis padres). Otros pasos son suaves como un pensamiento fugaz (la madre de Can Mutxera, que componía el belén más espectacular del barrio). Cuando más solo estoy, en este paseo navideño, más nutrida es la compañía. “¿Qué es para ti la Navidad?”, me pregunta Jordi Sacristán, delicado periodista que conduce el magazine finisemanal de ComRàdio. Navidad es el tiempo de mis muertos.
Así consta en un famoso cuento de Joyce. Después de la cena de Navidad en casa de las tías Kate y Julia, después de la abundante comida, de las discusiones políticas, de los brindis, cánticos y conversaciones, y después, claro está, de su aplaudido discurso literario, Gabriel se dispone a salir. Pero Gretta, su esposa, se detiene extasiada en el quicio de la puerta. Aduciendo ronquera, Bartell d'Arcy, que no quiso actuar en toda la velada, está finalmente cantando. Una antigua melodía: La joven de Aughrim. El rostro de Gretta cambia súbitamente y, en el coche, de regreso al hotel, se muestra ensimismada.
Quizás debido al extraño distanciamiento de su esposa, Gabriel siente un poderoso impulso sexual, pero no consigue atraerla. La conversación avanza penosamente hasta que, en un ataque de llanto, ella le cuenta que un joven murió por ella poco después de cantarle, en plena noche, La joven de Aughrim. Era un joven pretendiente de salud precaria. Desafiando la lluvia, se escapó de la cama en la que estaba recluido a causa de la tuberculosis, para cantar bajo su balcón con la esperanza de verla. Ella le dijo que se iba a morir con tanta lluvia, pero él respondió que no quería seguir viviendo. “¡Puedo ver sus ojos ahí mismo!”. Después de contarle la historia de Michael Furey, Gretta, finalmente, se duerme. Gabriel siente una punzada de celos y admira cómo su esposa ha guardado durante tantos años en su corazón la mirada de este joven. Supone que esto, que él nunca ha sentido, es verdaderamente amor. Mira por la ventana. Está nevando. Observa la nieve caer sobre la ciudad, sobre Irlanda entera. Sobre los vivos y los muertos. Cubre la calle y cubre las lomas del cementerio en el que está enterrado Michael Furey.
Nunca se marchan nuestros muertos, propiamente. Descansan en algún cementerio remoto y regresan justamente para estas fechas navideñas. Este es el verdadero significado del anuncio más tópico de estas fechas. Se reúnen en nuestras mesas, nos cuentan sus viejas historias, nos recuerdan sus olores y gestos, el sonido de sus voces, sus miradas. Cuestionan nuestros pasos. “¿Por qué?”. Preguntan por todo. Especialmente por aquello que ya no puede arreglarse.
El invierno también llega por Navidad. Deja en el campo una palidez morada. Durante mi paseo, los charcos cubren el camino y reflejan un cielo plomizo. De repente, un rayo de sol ilumina los árboles deshojados y el verde naciente del cereal. Es la luz de la tarde que se abre camino en el invierno plomizo: es la promesa de la primavera. Empieza el crudo invierno, pero la promesa está ahí.
De esto habla la Navidad: de la extraña manera que tiene el invierno de mezclarse con la primavera. El invierno representa a la muerte, pero empieza con la Navidad, que promete la luz. La luz es ahora corta y débil, pero triunfará dentro de unos meses. La Navidad promete esta luz no sólo a los que siempre ganan, sino a los que siempre pierden. Sobre esta promesa se funda nuestra civilización ahora en crisis. El humanismo.
2010/11/06
La contra 3-novembre-2010
Interessant entrevista sobre els valors de l'educació. El Sr. Ken Robinson defensa un sistema educatiu que ensenyi a innovar.
Publicat a La Contra de La Vanguardia del 3 de novembre de 2010.
http://hemeroteca.lavanguardia.es/preview/2010/11/03/pagina-72/84757075/pdf.html?search=la%20contra
Publicat a La Contra de La Vanguardia del 3 de novembre de 2010.
http://hemeroteca.lavanguardia.es/preview/2010/11/03/pagina-72/84757075/pdf.html?search=la%20contra
2010/08/28
Article interessant sobre la creació de llocs de treball
Ramon Aymerich, publicat a La Vanguardia el 28 d'agost de 2010
El futuro del Jonathan
El reto urgente es crear empleo para recuperar a los menos formados para el mercado
Hasta que duró, el textil fue un gran invento. Permitió crear riqueza y dio empleo a centenares de miles de personas. Muchas de ellas sin formación. No es que hoy no haya empresas textiles, pero no son ya aquella industria de masas que ocupó a tanta gente hasta la década de los 70. Después, el sector fue pulverizado por la competencia asiática, como otras industrias manufactureras –el calzado, el juguete, la electrónica de consumo– que lo acompañaron en el cambio de siglo. Pero su declive hizo menos daño de lo imaginable. Al menos en términos de empleo. Porque la construcción y el inmobiliario vinieron a suplir el papel de gran empleador local que tenían las viejas manufacturas.
Se vive como se trabaja. La industria manufacturera socializó a mucha gente e incluso la aventuró en el asociacionismo y el sindicalismo. El inmobiliario descapitalizó otros sectores y encumbró a los más listos, y pillos. Y la construcción los contrató a todos, incluso a los que salieron peor parados de tanto fracaso escolar. El Jonathan, todos los Jonathans, tuvieron un lugar en el mundo: pudieron comprarse coche, tunearlo y pedir el crédito para el piso.
Pero en aquella transición de uno a otro sector, este país se perdió una reflexión importante: si esta va dejando de ser una economía de bajos salarios, habrá que ir pensando en cómo se mantiene tanto empleo y en cómo transforma el sistema educativo. No se hizo ni una cosa ni la otra. Y aquel despiste vuelve ahora como un bumerán. Porque el mayor problema de esta larga crisis es crear empleo, empleo para gente sin mucha formación, pero con un salario digno. Y hoy se crea poco empleo, y a muy lenta velocidad. Aquí y en Estados Unidos. Pero especialmente aquí.
En un artículo publicado en Business Week el pasado julio, Andy Groove, fundador de Intel, escribía sobre el coste de crear un empleo en el sector de las tecnologías de la información. En 1970, dice Groove, cada nuevo empleo en Intel costaba 1.000 dólares. Cuarenta años después, un nuevo empleo en Google cuesta diez veces más (en dólares constantes). Las empresas americanas, razona Groove, están perdiendo la batalla del empleo. "Las start up son algo maravilloso, pero no crean empleo... Es tan importante el momento mítico de creación en el garaje como el paso del prototipo a la producción de masas". Parte de la causa está en la rapidez con la que China absorbe todo ese empleo. Esta misma semana, Foxconn, proveedora taiwanesa de empresas como Apple, ha anunciado que contratará 400.000 personas en los próximos doce meses (han leído bien: no es un chiste de chinos ni sobran ceros). Groove termina su artículo imaginando unos Estados Unidos con un vértice de satisfechos y una inmensa base de gente con empleos mal pagados. Sin clases medias. "Yo no quiero eso para mi país", concluye. Afirmación que compartirán todos ustedes. Pero para evitar eso, nos hacen falta unos cuantos textiles.
Andy Grove, 1 de juliol de 2010
How to Make an American Job Before It's Too Late
Recently an acquaintance at the next table in a Palo Alto, California, restaurant introduced me to his companions: three young venture capitalists from China. They explained, with visible excitement, that they were touring promising companies in Silicon Valley. I’ve lived in the Valley a long time, and usually when I see how the region has become such a draw for global investments, I feel a little proud.
Not this time. I left the restaurant unsettled. Something didn’t add up. Bay Area unemployment is even higher than the 9.7 percent national average. Clearly, the great Silicon Valley innovation machine hasn’t been creating many jobs of late -- unless you are counting Asia, where American technology companies have been adding jobs like mad for years.
The underlying problem isn’t simply lower Asian costs. It’s our own misplaced faith in the power of startups to create U.S. jobs. Americans love the idea of the guys in the garage inventing something that changes the world. New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman recently encapsulated this view in a piece called “Start-Ups, Not Bailouts.” His argument: Let tired old companies that do commodity manufacturing die if they have to. If Washington really wants to create jobs, he wrote, it should back startups.
Mythical Moment
Friedman is wrong. Startups are a wonderful thing, but they cannot by themselves increase tech employment. Equally important is what comes after that mythical moment of creation in the garage, as technology goes from prototype to mass production. This is the phase where companies scale up. They work out design details, figure out how to make things affordably, build factories, and hire people by the thousands. Scaling is hard work but necessary to make innovation matter.
The scaling process is no longer happening in the U.S. And as long as that’s the case, plowing capital into young companies that build their factories elsewhere will continue to yield a bad return in terms of American jobs.
Scaling used to work well in Silicon Valley. Entrepreneurs came up with an invention. Investors gave them money to build their business. If the founders and their investors were lucky, the company grew and had an initial public offering, which brought in money that financed further growth.
Intel Startup
I am fortunate to have lived through one such example. In 1968, two well-known technologists and their investor friends anted up $3 million to start Intel Corp., making memory chips for the computer industry. From the beginning, we had to figure out how to make our chips in volume. We had to build factories; hire, train and retain employees; establish relationships with suppliers; and sort out a million other things before Intel could become a billion-dollar company. Three years later, it went public and grew to be one of the biggest technology companies in the world. By 1980, which was 10 years after our IPO, about 13,000 people worked for Intel in the U.S.
Not far from Intel’s headquarters in Santa Clara, California, other companies developed. Tandem Computers Inc. went through a similar process, then Sun Microsystems Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., Netscape Communications Corp., and on and on. Some companies died along the way or were absorbed by others, but each survivor added to the complex technological ecosystem that came to be called Silicon Valley.
As time passed, wages and health-care costs rose in the U.S., and China opened up. American companies discovered they could have their manufacturing and even their engineering done cheaper overseas. When they did so, margins improved. Management was happy, and so were stockholders. Growth continued, even more profitably. But the job machine began sputtering.
U.S. Versus China
Today, manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is about 166,000 -- lower than it was before the first personal computer, the MITS Altair 2800, was assembled in 1975. Meanwhile, a very effective computer-manufacturing industry has emerged in Asia, employing about 1.5 million workers -- factory employees, engineers and managers.
The largest of these companies is Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., also known as Foxconn. The company has grown at an astounding rate, first in Taiwan and later in China. Its revenue last year was $62 billion, larger than Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp., Dell Inc. or Intel. Foxconn employs more than 800,000 people, more than the combined worldwide head count of Apple, Dell, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard Co., Intel and Sony Corp.
10-to-1 Ratio
Until a recent spate of suicides at Foxconn’s giant factory complex in Shenzhen, China, few Americans had heard of the company. But most know the products it makes: computers for Dell and HP, Nokia Oyj cell phones, Microsoft Xbox 360 consoles, Intel motherboards, and countless other familiar gadgets. Some 250,000 Foxconn employees in southern China produce Apple’s products. Apple, meanwhile, has about 25,000 employees in the U.S. -- that means for every Apple worker in the U.S. there are 10 people in China working on iMacs, iPods and iPhones. The same roughly 10-to-1 relationship holds for Dell, disk-drive maker Seagate Technology, and other U.S. tech companies.
You could say, as many do, that shipping jobs overseas is no big deal because the high-value work -- and much of the profits -- remain in the U.S. That may well be so. But what kind of a society are we going to have if it consists of highly paid people doing high-value-added work -- and masses of unemployed?
Since the early days of Silicon Valley, the money invested in companies has increased dramatically, only to produce fewer jobs. Simply put, the U.S. has become wildly inefficient at creating American tech jobs. We may be less aware of this growing inefficiency, however, because our history of creating jobs over the past few decades has been spectacular -- masking our greater and greater spending to create each position.
Tragic Mistake
Should we wait and not act on the basis of early indicators? I think that would be a tragic mistake because the only chance we have to reverse the deterioration is if we act early and decisively.
Already the decline has been marked. It may be measured by way of a simple calculation: an estimate of the employment cost- effectiveness of a company. First, take the initial investment plus the investment during a company’s IPO. Then divide that by the number of employees working in that company 10 years later. For Intel, this worked out to be about $650 per job -- $3,600 adjusted for inflation. National Semiconductor Corp., another chip company, was even more efficient at $2,000 per job.
Making the same calculations for a number of Silicon Valley companies shows that the cost of creating U.S. jobs grew from a few thousand dollars per position in the early years to $100,000 today. The obvious reason: Companies simply hire fewer employees as more work is done by outside contractors, usually in Asia.
Alternative Energy
The job-machine breakdown isn’t just in computers. Consider alternative energy, an emerging industry where there is plenty of innovation. Photovoltaics, for example, are a U.S. invention. Their use in home-energy applications was also pioneered by the U.S.
Last year, I decided to do my bit for energy conservation and set out to equip my house with solar power. My wife and I talked with four local solar firms. As part of our due diligence, I checked where they get their photovoltaic panels -- the key part of the system. All the panels they use come from China. A Silicon Valley company sells equipment used to manufacture photo-active films. They ship close to 10 times more machines to China than to manufacturers in the U.S., and this gap is growing. Not surprisingly, U.S. employment in the making of photovoltaic films and panels is perhaps 10,000 -- just a few percent of estimated worldwide employment.
Advanced Batteries
There’s more at stake than exported jobs. With some technologies, both scaling and innovation take place overseas. Such is the case with advanced batteries. It has taken years and many false starts, but finally we are about to witness mass- produced electric cars and trucks. They all rely on lithium-ion batteries. What microprocessors are to computing, batteries are to electric vehicles. Unlike with microprocessors, the U.S. share of lithium-ion battery production is tiny.
That’s a problem. A new industry needs an effective ecosystem in which technology knowhow accumulates, experience builds on experience, and close relationships develop between supplier and customer. The U.S. lost its lead in batteries 30 years ago when it stopped making consumer-electronics devices. Whoever made batteries then gained the exposure and relationships needed to learn to supply batteries for the more demanding laptop PC market, and after that, for the even more demanding automobile market. U.S. companies didn’t participate in the first phase and consequently weren’t in the running for all that followed. I doubt they will ever catch up.
Job Creation
Scaling isn’t easy. The investments required are much higher than in the invention phase. And funds need to be committed early, when not much is known about the potential market. Another example from Intel: The investment to build a silicon manufacturing plant in the 1970s was a few million dollars. By the early 1990s, the cost of the factories that would be able to produce the new Pentium chips in volume rose to several billion dollars. The decision to build these plants needed to be made years before we knew whether the Pentium chip would work or whether the market would be interested in it.
Lessons we learned from previous missteps helped us. Years earlier, when Intel’s business consisted of making memory chips, we hesitated to add manufacturing capacity, not being sure about the market demand in years to come. Our Japanese competitors didn’t hesitate: They built the plants. When the demand for memory chips exploded, the Japanese roared into the U.S. market and Intel began its descent as a memory-chip supplier.
Intel Experience
Though steeled by that experience, I remember how afraid I was as I asked the Intel directors for authorization to spend billions of dollars for factories to make a product that didn’t exist at the time for a market we couldn’t size. Fortunately, they gave their OK even as they gulped. The bet paid off.
My point isn’t that Intel was brilliant. The company was founded at a time when it was easier to scale domestically. For one thing, China wasn’t yet open for business. More importantly, the U.S. hadn’t yet forgotten that scaling was crucial to its economic future.
How could the U.S. have forgotten? I believe the answer has to do with a general undervaluing of manufacturing -- the idea that as long as “knowledge work” stays in the U.S., it doesn’t matter what happens to factory jobs. It’s not just newspaper commentators who spread this idea.
Offshore Production
Consider this passage by Princeton University economist Alan S. Blinder: “The TV manufacturing industry really started here, and at one point employed many workers. But as TV sets became ‘just a commodity,’ their production moved offshore to locations with much lower wages. And nowadays the number of television sets manufactured in the U.S. is zero. A failure? No, a success.”
I disagree. Not only did we lose an untold number of jobs, we broke the chain of experience that is so important in technological evolution. As happened with batteries, abandoning today’s “commodity” manufacturing can lock you out of tomorrow’s emerging industry.
Our fundamental economic beliefs, which we have elevated from a conviction based on observation to an unquestioned truism, is that the free market is the best economic system -- the freer, the better. Our generation has seen the decisive victory of free-market principles over planned economies. So we stick with this belief, largely oblivious to emerging evidence that while free markets beat planned economies, there may be room for a modification that is even better.
No. 1 Objective
Such evidence stares at us from the performance of several Asian countries in the past few decades. These countries seem to understand that job creation must be the No. 1 objective of state economic policy. The government plays a strategic role in setting the priorities and arraying the forces and organization necessary to achieve this goal.
The rapid development of the Asian economies provides numerous illustrations. In a thorough study of the industrial development of East Asia, Robert Wade of the London School of Economics found that these economies turned in precedent- shattering economic performances over the 1970s and 1980s in large part because of the effective involvement of the government in targeting the growth of manufacturing industries.
Consider the “Golden Projects,” a series of digital initiatives driven by the Chinese government in the late 1980s and 1990s. Beijing was convinced of the importance of electronic networks -- used for transactions, communications and coordination -- in enabling job creation, particularly in the less developed parts of the country. Consequently, the Golden Projects enjoyed priority funding. In time, they contributed to the rapid development of China’s information infrastructure and the country’s economic growth.
Job-Centric Economy
How do we turn such Asian experience into intelligent action here and now? Long term, we need a job-centric economic theory -- and job-centric political leadership -- to guide our plans and actions. In the meantime, consider some basic thoughts from a onetime factory guy.
Silicon Valley is a community with a strong tradition of engineering, and engineers are a peculiar breed. They are eager to solve whatever problems they encounter. If profit margins are the problem, we go to work on margins, with exquisite focus. Each company, ruggedly individualistic, does its best to expand efficiently and improve its own profitability. However, our pursuit of our individual businesses, which often involves transferring manufacturing and a great deal of engineering out of the country, has hindered our ability to bring innovations to scale at home. Without scaling, we don’t just lose jobs -- we lose our hold on new technologies. Losing the ability to scale will ultimately damage our capacity to innovate.
Blade Didn’t Drop
The story comes to mind of an engineer who was to be executed by guillotine. The guillotine was stuck, and custom required that if the blade didn’t drop, the condemned man was set free. Before this could happen, the engineer pointed with excitement to a rusty pulley, and told the executioner to apply some oil there. Off went his head.
We got to our current state as a consequence of many of us taking actions focused on our own companies’ next milestones. An example: Five years ago, a friend joined a large VC firm as a partner. His responsibility was to make sure that all the startups they funded had a “China strategy,” meaning a plan to move what jobs they could to China. He was going around with an oil can, applying drops to the guillotine in case it was stuck. We should put away our oil cans. VCs should have a partner in charge of every startup’s “U.S. strategy.”
Financial Incentives
The first task is to rebuild our industrial commons. We should develop a system of financial incentives: Levy an extra tax on the product of offshored labor. (If the result is a trade war, treat it like other wars -- fight to win.) Keep that money separate. Deposit it in the coffers of what we might call the Scaling Bank of the U.S. and make these sums available to companies that will scale their American operations. Such a system would be a daily reminder that while pursuing our company goals, all of us in business have a responsibility to maintain the industrial base on which we depend and the society whose adaptability -- and stability -- we may have taken for granted.
I fled Hungary as a young man in 1956 to come to the U.S. Growing up in the Soviet bloc, I witnessed first-hand the perils of both government overreach and a stratified population. Most Americans probably aren’t aware that there was a time in this country when tanks and cavalry were massed on Pennsylvania Avenue to chase away the unemployed. It was 1932; thousands of jobless veterans were demonstrating outside the White House. Soldiers with fixed bayonets and live ammunition moved in on them, and herded them away from the White House. In America! Unemployment is corrosive. If what I’m suggesting sounds protectionist, so be it.
Choice Is Simple
Every day, that Palo Alto restaurant where I met the Chinese venture capitalists is full of technology executives and entrepreneurs. Many of them are my friends. I understand the technological challenges they face, along with the financial pressure they are under from directors and shareholders. Can we expect them to take on yet another assignment, to work on behalf of a loosely defined community of companies, employees, and employees yet to be hired? To do so is undoubtedly naive. Yet the imperative for change is real and the choice is simple. If we want to remain a leading economy, we change on our own, or change will continue to be forced upon us.
(Andy Grove, senior adviser to Intel, was the company’s chief executive officer or chairman from 1987 until 2005. The opinions expressed, featured in the July 5 issue of Bloomberg Businessweek, are his own.)
El futuro del Jonathan
El reto urgente es crear empleo para recuperar a los menos formados para el mercado
Hasta que duró, el textil fue un gran invento. Permitió crear riqueza y dio empleo a centenares de miles de personas. Muchas de ellas sin formación. No es que hoy no haya empresas textiles, pero no son ya aquella industria de masas que ocupó a tanta gente hasta la década de los 70. Después, el sector fue pulverizado por la competencia asiática, como otras industrias manufactureras –el calzado, el juguete, la electrónica de consumo– que lo acompañaron en el cambio de siglo. Pero su declive hizo menos daño de lo imaginable. Al menos en términos de empleo. Porque la construcción y el inmobiliario vinieron a suplir el papel de gran empleador local que tenían las viejas manufacturas.
Se vive como se trabaja. La industria manufacturera socializó a mucha gente e incluso la aventuró en el asociacionismo y el sindicalismo. El inmobiliario descapitalizó otros sectores y encumbró a los más listos, y pillos. Y la construcción los contrató a todos, incluso a los que salieron peor parados de tanto fracaso escolar. El Jonathan, todos los Jonathans, tuvieron un lugar en el mundo: pudieron comprarse coche, tunearlo y pedir el crédito para el piso.
Pero en aquella transición de uno a otro sector, este país se perdió una reflexión importante: si esta va dejando de ser una economía de bajos salarios, habrá que ir pensando en cómo se mantiene tanto empleo y en cómo transforma el sistema educativo. No se hizo ni una cosa ni la otra. Y aquel despiste vuelve ahora como un bumerán. Porque el mayor problema de esta larga crisis es crear empleo, empleo para gente sin mucha formación, pero con un salario digno. Y hoy se crea poco empleo, y a muy lenta velocidad. Aquí y en Estados Unidos. Pero especialmente aquí.
En un artículo publicado en Business Week el pasado julio, Andy Groove, fundador de Intel, escribía sobre el coste de crear un empleo en el sector de las tecnologías de la información. En 1970, dice Groove, cada nuevo empleo en Intel costaba 1.000 dólares. Cuarenta años después, un nuevo empleo en Google cuesta diez veces más (en dólares constantes). Las empresas americanas, razona Groove, están perdiendo la batalla del empleo. "Las start up son algo maravilloso, pero no crean empleo... Es tan importante el momento mítico de creación en el garaje como el paso del prototipo a la producción de masas". Parte de la causa está en la rapidez con la que China absorbe todo ese empleo. Esta misma semana, Foxconn, proveedora taiwanesa de empresas como Apple, ha anunciado que contratará 400.000 personas en los próximos doce meses (han leído bien: no es un chiste de chinos ni sobran ceros). Groove termina su artículo imaginando unos Estados Unidos con un vértice de satisfechos y una inmensa base de gente con empleos mal pagados. Sin clases medias. "Yo no quiero eso para mi país", concluye. Afirmación que compartirán todos ustedes. Pero para evitar eso, nos hacen falta unos cuantos textiles.
Andy Grove, 1 de juliol de 2010
How to Make an American Job Before It's Too Late
Recently an acquaintance at the next table in a Palo Alto, California, restaurant introduced me to his companions: three young venture capitalists from China. They explained, with visible excitement, that they were touring promising companies in Silicon Valley. I’ve lived in the Valley a long time, and usually when I see how the region has become such a draw for global investments, I feel a little proud.
Not this time. I left the restaurant unsettled. Something didn’t add up. Bay Area unemployment is even higher than the 9.7 percent national average. Clearly, the great Silicon Valley innovation machine hasn’t been creating many jobs of late -- unless you are counting Asia, where American technology companies have been adding jobs like mad for years.
The underlying problem isn’t simply lower Asian costs. It’s our own misplaced faith in the power of startups to create U.S. jobs. Americans love the idea of the guys in the garage inventing something that changes the world. New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman recently encapsulated this view in a piece called “Start-Ups, Not Bailouts.” His argument: Let tired old companies that do commodity manufacturing die if they have to. If Washington really wants to create jobs, he wrote, it should back startups.
Mythical Moment
Friedman is wrong. Startups are a wonderful thing, but they cannot by themselves increase tech employment. Equally important is what comes after that mythical moment of creation in the garage, as technology goes from prototype to mass production. This is the phase where companies scale up. They work out design details, figure out how to make things affordably, build factories, and hire people by the thousands. Scaling is hard work but necessary to make innovation matter.
The scaling process is no longer happening in the U.S. And as long as that’s the case, plowing capital into young companies that build their factories elsewhere will continue to yield a bad return in terms of American jobs.
Scaling used to work well in Silicon Valley. Entrepreneurs came up with an invention. Investors gave them money to build their business. If the founders and their investors were lucky, the company grew and had an initial public offering, which brought in money that financed further growth.
Intel Startup
I am fortunate to have lived through one such example. In 1968, two well-known technologists and their investor friends anted up $3 million to start Intel Corp., making memory chips for the computer industry. From the beginning, we had to figure out how to make our chips in volume. We had to build factories; hire, train and retain employees; establish relationships with suppliers; and sort out a million other things before Intel could become a billion-dollar company. Three years later, it went public and grew to be one of the biggest technology companies in the world. By 1980, which was 10 years after our IPO, about 13,000 people worked for Intel in the U.S.
Not far from Intel’s headquarters in Santa Clara, California, other companies developed. Tandem Computers Inc. went through a similar process, then Sun Microsystems Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., Netscape Communications Corp., and on and on. Some companies died along the way or were absorbed by others, but each survivor added to the complex technological ecosystem that came to be called Silicon Valley.
As time passed, wages and health-care costs rose in the U.S., and China opened up. American companies discovered they could have their manufacturing and even their engineering done cheaper overseas. When they did so, margins improved. Management was happy, and so were stockholders. Growth continued, even more profitably. But the job machine began sputtering.
U.S. Versus China
Today, manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is about 166,000 -- lower than it was before the first personal computer, the MITS Altair 2800, was assembled in 1975. Meanwhile, a very effective computer-manufacturing industry has emerged in Asia, employing about 1.5 million workers -- factory employees, engineers and managers.
The largest of these companies is Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., also known as Foxconn. The company has grown at an astounding rate, first in Taiwan and later in China. Its revenue last year was $62 billion, larger than Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp., Dell Inc. or Intel. Foxconn employs more than 800,000 people, more than the combined worldwide head count of Apple, Dell, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard Co., Intel and Sony Corp.
10-to-1 Ratio
Until a recent spate of suicides at Foxconn’s giant factory complex in Shenzhen, China, few Americans had heard of the company. But most know the products it makes: computers for Dell and HP, Nokia Oyj cell phones, Microsoft Xbox 360 consoles, Intel motherboards, and countless other familiar gadgets. Some 250,000 Foxconn employees in southern China produce Apple’s products. Apple, meanwhile, has about 25,000 employees in the U.S. -- that means for every Apple worker in the U.S. there are 10 people in China working on iMacs, iPods and iPhones. The same roughly 10-to-1 relationship holds for Dell, disk-drive maker Seagate Technology, and other U.S. tech companies.
You could say, as many do, that shipping jobs overseas is no big deal because the high-value work -- and much of the profits -- remain in the U.S. That may well be so. But what kind of a society are we going to have if it consists of highly paid people doing high-value-added work -- and masses of unemployed?
Since the early days of Silicon Valley, the money invested in companies has increased dramatically, only to produce fewer jobs. Simply put, the U.S. has become wildly inefficient at creating American tech jobs. We may be less aware of this growing inefficiency, however, because our history of creating jobs over the past few decades has been spectacular -- masking our greater and greater spending to create each position.
Tragic Mistake
Should we wait and not act on the basis of early indicators? I think that would be a tragic mistake because the only chance we have to reverse the deterioration is if we act early and decisively.
Already the decline has been marked. It may be measured by way of a simple calculation: an estimate of the employment cost- effectiveness of a company. First, take the initial investment plus the investment during a company’s IPO. Then divide that by the number of employees working in that company 10 years later. For Intel, this worked out to be about $650 per job -- $3,600 adjusted for inflation. National Semiconductor Corp., another chip company, was even more efficient at $2,000 per job.
Making the same calculations for a number of Silicon Valley companies shows that the cost of creating U.S. jobs grew from a few thousand dollars per position in the early years to $100,000 today. The obvious reason: Companies simply hire fewer employees as more work is done by outside contractors, usually in Asia.
Alternative Energy
The job-machine breakdown isn’t just in computers. Consider alternative energy, an emerging industry where there is plenty of innovation. Photovoltaics, for example, are a U.S. invention. Their use in home-energy applications was also pioneered by the U.S.
Last year, I decided to do my bit for energy conservation and set out to equip my house with solar power. My wife and I talked with four local solar firms. As part of our due diligence, I checked where they get their photovoltaic panels -- the key part of the system. All the panels they use come from China. A Silicon Valley company sells equipment used to manufacture photo-active films. They ship close to 10 times more machines to China than to manufacturers in the U.S., and this gap is growing. Not surprisingly, U.S. employment in the making of photovoltaic films and panels is perhaps 10,000 -- just a few percent of estimated worldwide employment.
Advanced Batteries
There’s more at stake than exported jobs. With some technologies, both scaling and innovation take place overseas. Such is the case with advanced batteries. It has taken years and many false starts, but finally we are about to witness mass- produced electric cars and trucks. They all rely on lithium-ion batteries. What microprocessors are to computing, batteries are to electric vehicles. Unlike with microprocessors, the U.S. share of lithium-ion battery production is tiny.
That’s a problem. A new industry needs an effective ecosystem in which technology knowhow accumulates, experience builds on experience, and close relationships develop between supplier and customer. The U.S. lost its lead in batteries 30 years ago when it stopped making consumer-electronics devices. Whoever made batteries then gained the exposure and relationships needed to learn to supply batteries for the more demanding laptop PC market, and after that, for the even more demanding automobile market. U.S. companies didn’t participate in the first phase and consequently weren’t in the running for all that followed. I doubt they will ever catch up.
Job Creation
Scaling isn’t easy. The investments required are much higher than in the invention phase. And funds need to be committed early, when not much is known about the potential market. Another example from Intel: The investment to build a silicon manufacturing plant in the 1970s was a few million dollars. By the early 1990s, the cost of the factories that would be able to produce the new Pentium chips in volume rose to several billion dollars. The decision to build these plants needed to be made years before we knew whether the Pentium chip would work or whether the market would be interested in it.
Lessons we learned from previous missteps helped us. Years earlier, when Intel’s business consisted of making memory chips, we hesitated to add manufacturing capacity, not being sure about the market demand in years to come. Our Japanese competitors didn’t hesitate: They built the plants. When the demand for memory chips exploded, the Japanese roared into the U.S. market and Intel began its descent as a memory-chip supplier.
Intel Experience
Though steeled by that experience, I remember how afraid I was as I asked the Intel directors for authorization to spend billions of dollars for factories to make a product that didn’t exist at the time for a market we couldn’t size. Fortunately, they gave their OK even as they gulped. The bet paid off.
My point isn’t that Intel was brilliant. The company was founded at a time when it was easier to scale domestically. For one thing, China wasn’t yet open for business. More importantly, the U.S. hadn’t yet forgotten that scaling was crucial to its economic future.
How could the U.S. have forgotten? I believe the answer has to do with a general undervaluing of manufacturing -- the idea that as long as “knowledge work” stays in the U.S., it doesn’t matter what happens to factory jobs. It’s not just newspaper commentators who spread this idea.
Offshore Production
Consider this passage by Princeton University economist Alan S. Blinder: “The TV manufacturing industry really started here, and at one point employed many workers. But as TV sets became ‘just a commodity,’ their production moved offshore to locations with much lower wages. And nowadays the number of television sets manufactured in the U.S. is zero. A failure? No, a success.”
I disagree. Not only did we lose an untold number of jobs, we broke the chain of experience that is so important in technological evolution. As happened with batteries, abandoning today’s “commodity” manufacturing can lock you out of tomorrow’s emerging industry.
Our fundamental economic beliefs, which we have elevated from a conviction based on observation to an unquestioned truism, is that the free market is the best economic system -- the freer, the better. Our generation has seen the decisive victory of free-market principles over planned economies. So we stick with this belief, largely oblivious to emerging evidence that while free markets beat planned economies, there may be room for a modification that is even better.
No. 1 Objective
Such evidence stares at us from the performance of several Asian countries in the past few decades. These countries seem to understand that job creation must be the No. 1 objective of state economic policy. The government plays a strategic role in setting the priorities and arraying the forces and organization necessary to achieve this goal.
The rapid development of the Asian economies provides numerous illustrations. In a thorough study of the industrial development of East Asia, Robert Wade of the London School of Economics found that these economies turned in precedent- shattering economic performances over the 1970s and 1980s in large part because of the effective involvement of the government in targeting the growth of manufacturing industries.
Consider the “Golden Projects,” a series of digital initiatives driven by the Chinese government in the late 1980s and 1990s. Beijing was convinced of the importance of electronic networks -- used for transactions, communications and coordination -- in enabling job creation, particularly in the less developed parts of the country. Consequently, the Golden Projects enjoyed priority funding. In time, they contributed to the rapid development of China’s information infrastructure and the country’s economic growth.
Job-Centric Economy
How do we turn such Asian experience into intelligent action here and now? Long term, we need a job-centric economic theory -- and job-centric political leadership -- to guide our plans and actions. In the meantime, consider some basic thoughts from a onetime factory guy.
Silicon Valley is a community with a strong tradition of engineering, and engineers are a peculiar breed. They are eager to solve whatever problems they encounter. If profit margins are the problem, we go to work on margins, with exquisite focus. Each company, ruggedly individualistic, does its best to expand efficiently and improve its own profitability. However, our pursuit of our individual businesses, which often involves transferring manufacturing and a great deal of engineering out of the country, has hindered our ability to bring innovations to scale at home. Without scaling, we don’t just lose jobs -- we lose our hold on new technologies. Losing the ability to scale will ultimately damage our capacity to innovate.
Blade Didn’t Drop
The story comes to mind of an engineer who was to be executed by guillotine. The guillotine was stuck, and custom required that if the blade didn’t drop, the condemned man was set free. Before this could happen, the engineer pointed with excitement to a rusty pulley, and told the executioner to apply some oil there. Off went his head.
We got to our current state as a consequence of many of us taking actions focused on our own companies’ next milestones. An example: Five years ago, a friend joined a large VC firm as a partner. His responsibility was to make sure that all the startups they funded had a “China strategy,” meaning a plan to move what jobs they could to China. He was going around with an oil can, applying drops to the guillotine in case it was stuck. We should put away our oil cans. VCs should have a partner in charge of every startup’s “U.S. strategy.”
Financial Incentives
The first task is to rebuild our industrial commons. We should develop a system of financial incentives: Levy an extra tax on the product of offshored labor. (If the result is a trade war, treat it like other wars -- fight to win.) Keep that money separate. Deposit it in the coffers of what we might call the Scaling Bank of the U.S. and make these sums available to companies that will scale their American operations. Such a system would be a daily reminder that while pursuing our company goals, all of us in business have a responsibility to maintain the industrial base on which we depend and the society whose adaptability -- and stability -- we may have taken for granted.
I fled Hungary as a young man in 1956 to come to the U.S. Growing up in the Soviet bloc, I witnessed first-hand the perils of both government overreach and a stratified population. Most Americans probably aren’t aware that there was a time in this country when tanks and cavalry were massed on Pennsylvania Avenue to chase away the unemployed. It was 1932; thousands of jobless veterans were demonstrating outside the White House. Soldiers with fixed bayonets and live ammunition moved in on them, and herded them away from the White House. In America! Unemployment is corrosive. If what I’m suggesting sounds protectionist, so be it.
Choice Is Simple
Every day, that Palo Alto restaurant where I met the Chinese venture capitalists is full of technology executives and entrepreneurs. Many of them are my friends. I understand the technological challenges they face, along with the financial pressure they are under from directors and shareholders. Can we expect them to take on yet another assignment, to work on behalf of a loosely defined community of companies, employees, and employees yet to be hired? To do so is undoubtedly naive. Yet the imperative for change is real and the choice is simple. If we want to remain a leading economy, we change on our own, or change will continue to be forced upon us.
(Andy Grove, senior adviser to Intel, was the company’s chief executive officer or chairman from 1987 until 2005. The opinions expressed, featured in the July 5 issue of Bloomberg Businessweek, are his own.)
2010/08/22
Un futuro de balones
Article d'Antoni Puigverd publicat a La Vanguardia el 21 d'agost de 2010
No hi ha millor manera d'expressar el conflicte amb el que es troba ara la cultura de l'esforç el món de l'educació. En comparteixo plenament les idees.
No hi ha millor manera d'expressar el conflicte amb el que es troba ara la cultura de l'esforç el món de l'educació. En comparteixo plenament les idees.
2010/08/14
No és una illa per a joves
Publicat a La Vanguardia el 10 d'agost de 2010
M'ha agradat aquest article. Explica la història de l'illa escocesa de Lismore, ara pràcticament abandonada, on hi viuen poc més de 100 persones, la gran majoria de més de 60 anys. I no volen ni sentir a parlar de "la civilització". A més, gairebé tots els homes es diuen Duncan, el que provoca que s'hagin d'identificar pel sobrenom: "Duncan el de la granja de la muntanya", "Duncan el que va néixer el dia de Nadal"...
M'ha agradat aquest article. Explica la història de l'illa escocesa de Lismore, ara pràcticament abandonada, on hi viuen poc més de 100 persones, la gran majoria de més de 60 anys. I no volen ni sentir a parlar de "la civilització". A més, gairebé tots els homes es diuen Duncan, el que provoca que s'hagin d'identificar pel sobrenom: "Duncan el de la granja de la muntanya", "Duncan el que va néixer el dia de Nadal"...
Estudis sobre els preus i el grau de satisfacció dels supermercats
Extret d'El 9 Nou del 13 d'agost de 2010
Últimament s'han publicat dos estudis que avaluen els supermercats. Un, fet pel departament d'Economia de la Generalitat, es fixa en els preus, i sobre un promig de 100 elabora els preus mitjans de cada supermercat. L'altre, fet per l'OCU (Organització de Consumidors i Usuaris) avalua diversos paràmetres obtenint un índex de satisfacció general per cada supermercat. Els resultats els podeu veure en el gràfic.
Últimament s'han publicat dos estudis que avaluen els supermercats. Un, fet pel departament d'Economia de la Generalitat, es fixa en els preus, i sobre un promig de 100 elabora els preus mitjans de cada supermercat. L'altre, fet per l'OCU (Organització de Consumidors i Usuaris) avalua diversos paràmetres obtenint un índex de satisfacció general per cada supermercat. Els resultats els podeu veure en el gràfic.
2010/06/01
Ajudant a digitalitzar llibres
El dia 1 d'agost Màrius Serra va publicar a La Vanguardia un escrit on explicava l'origen del sistema CAPTCHA, que serveix per a distingir persones de màquines quan naveguem per Internet, i una aplicació d'aquest mètode anomenada reCAPTCHA, que fa servir paraules de textos escanejats i d'aquesta manera l'usuari contribueix a la seva digitalització. Més informació aquí. Molt interessant i molt bona idea.
2010/05/23
Els pròxims 100 anys
George Friedman és un expert en predir com seran el futur des del punt de vista geoestratègic. No soc partidari de fer molt cas de les prediccions a llarg termini, però sempre és interessant veure què hi diuen els que es dediquen a aquest tipus de coses.
Aquí hi ha una entrevista que li van fer al Magazine del 23 de maig de 2010.
El resum és el següent:
Aquí hi ha una entrevista que li van fer al Magazine del 23 de maig de 2010.
El resum és el següent:
HISTORIA DEL SIGLO XXI... SEGÚN GEORGE FRIEDMAN
2010 Estados Unidos vence la guerra contra Al Qaeda.
2020 China se fragmenta y Estados Unidos y Rusia se enfrentan en una nueva guerra fría. Rusia se derrumba
2030 La crisis demográfica y el envejecimiento global definen el siglo
2040 Emergen tres potencias para controlar Eurasia: Japón, Turquía y Polonia
2050 Estados Unidos se impone en la guerra mundial en la que participan Japón, Turquía y Polonia
2100 El siglo concluye con una guerra entre Estados Unidos y México –solapada con una guerra civil en Estados Unidos– por el control de Norteamérica
2010/05/05
2010/03/13
2010/03/07
S'ha de deixar expressar les idees a tothom
Hi estiguem d'acord o no, incloguin falsedats o no, hem de deixar expressar les idees a tothom per a poder rebatre-les raonadament.
Aquesta "idea" està molt ben expressada en aquest article.
Aquesta "idea" està molt ben expressada en aquest article.
2009/12/21
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