INCREASING WORKER'S WAGES

There is much lip service being paid today about the wages of workers not increasing as productivity increases.  As I have stated elsewhere, workers face three problems: (1) the wages of workers must be less than the costs of automation, (2) there must be some sort of parity with low-cost labor elsewhere (low-cost labor wages + costs of transportation + price of natural gas, etc.), and (3) some jobs are just being eliminated, either entirely or to a great degree (e.g. gas station attendants, clerk-typists, telephone receptionists).  The current economy of the U.S. is overall very good; however, it is concentrated in the larger cities (greater than 300,000 population) whereas smaller communities (less than 50,000) are being left behind so the recovery from the Great Recession is uneven (I.E. the jobs are not where the workers are and many jobs go unfilled because of the lack of qualified workers.]). To the best of my knowledge, no one is outlining a solution to the problem except with platitudes.

In the last half of the 1960s, I was a member of a small group of people who went one night a week to a large high-rise low-cost apartment complex in Denver, CO, in an attempt to motivate children.  It was a time of a building boom in Denver and each year you could feel the optimism rising among the people of the development as there were plenty of jobs even for the unskilled and semi-skilled.  I was transferred to Switzerland late in 1968 for a year followed by 14 mo. in Washington, D.C.  When I came back to the Denver area, the building boom was unfortunately over and the morale had reverted to the level prior to the building boom.  Additionally, the group of "motivators" had been abandoned.

The experience in Denver led me to the only solution that I can think of.  The infrastructure of the U.S. is deteriorating.  We should have had a large infrastructure program during the Great Recession because construction workers were hit hard, but we wasted this opportunity when unemployment was very high and costs would have been low.  Now construction has recovered and workers are scarce, particularly where many workers are.

But if a large infrastructure program was undertaken today, the employment picture would have to incorporate many unskilled and semi-skilled unemployed workers and infrastructure could begin in areas where the low wages continue.  There is a big problem, however, very big.  The infrastructure program could not be a three-year undertaking that is popular with politicians, but it would have to continue for a generation so the the children of the workers could be properly educated to assume jobs in the modern world, and they probably would have to be mobile.  Young people are more amenable to moving so that may not be a problem.  Though this program might work, I fear it is only a dream.

DRESSING FOR GEOLOGICAL BANQUETS - Biographical

A few decades ago, I was to give an address honoring one of my colleagues at an international meeting of geochemists.  It was to be in Tucson, AZ, in the summer.  Tucson is near the Mexican border.  I told my wife that she would have to take a nice dress through she usually wore trousers, pedal pushers, or , on rare occasions, shorts.  She rebelled against this, but I insisted so she finally agreed and did include a nice dress.  So the night of the banquet, she duly got into her dress and panty hose on this blistering hot day, and we went to the reception.  In came the female geologists from their day in the field dressed in flop-flops, shorts and dirty, stringy hair, and nap sacks.  My wife gave me a look of "You'll never get me to do this again."

Some years later I again was to give an address honoring a friend of mine at a Geological Society of America banquet during their annual meeting in Denver, CO, in October when it is often still hot.  This time I didn't insist that my wife dress up.  It was a good thing because the same this happened in this up-scale hotel where the banquet was to be held as the women geologists came in dressed in their "uniforms" of flop-flops, shorts, dirty, stringy hair, and nap sacks.

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THE COTTONWOODS OF DENVER (Poem)

The glaring sun shines down on

This desert waste of land

Lined with gold-green leaves.

The cottonwoods of Denver

Stately beside ditches stand

Up against the sky.

With chill air of dusk falling,

The songbirds now banned,

The sinking sun sets.

Blue mountains beyond tree tops,

Rimmed with blue-cloud’s band,

Stand there forever.

1967