Bill DeBlasio is an open Communist

NYC Mayor Bill DeBlasio claims it's OK to quote Karl Marx, and says the business community doesn't matter so much, that he's concerned about the "working" people. Who do those people work for, other than the government? Restaurant owners--working people. Theater owners--working people. Hotel owners--working people. Tour companies--working people. Sports teams--working people.

In the early days of the Soviet Union, Lenin killed the Kulaks--if you even owned a cow, you were part of the bourgeoisie capitalist crowd. When Russia ran out of food, he blamed the lazy Kulaks. That's what DeBlasio is doing to the formerly great NYC.

https://nypost.com/2020/07/24/de-blasio-quotes-communist-karl-marx-in-nyc-radio-interview/

“Kathy Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, said that de Blasio “suggests that the business community somehow does not represent working people, which is an ideological position and not an accurate representation of our city’s highly diverse private sector.”

“This crisis is a moment to bring the people of New York together, not to divide them,” said Wylde, whose organization represents businesses that collectively employ 1.5 million New Yorkers.

Jay Martin of the Community Housing Improvement Program, which represents 4,000 building owners, accused de Blasio of having “done nothing to improve the living conditions of tens of thousands of [public-housing] residents.”

“He talks about a Marxist utopia and demonizes the very businesses that fund his progressive pet projects, while many of his constituents live without hot water because of his incompetence,” Martin said.”

Some companies focus just on women

What if there were a company that focuses on pushing men ahead in business? Is that legal? Women have been ahead of men over a decade in college enrollment rate and graduation. And in many cities with similar education and jobs, women are earning more than men, not because they are better, but because the companies get perks for hiring women. If women still need a boost, how about letting them have their own athletic events and locker rooms; they are smaller with different body builds and that won't change with some regulatory bureaucrat demanding women and men are the same with interchangeable parts.

https://www.geekwire.com/2019/wework-fallout-isnt-affecting-women-focused-co-working-startup-riveter/

“The Riveter is unique among the rising tide of companies offering flexible office space, not only with its focus on women but its business model. Less than half of its revenue comes from co-working rent fees, and 80 percent of its membership base does not work out of the company’s nine locations across the U.S.

Riveter members pay $19 per month to be a “Riveter Ally,” and $199 to $400-plus per month for coworking space. They get benefits such as discounts on travel and event tickets, along with the access to a network. The company also offers corporate memberships.”

That pesky male female gap

The Pew Research Center found that 2019 will be the first year in which women will comprise the majority of the college-educated labor force in the United States. Women first received more than half of the bachelor’s degrees awarded in the 1981-82 academic year—almost 40 years ago.  Today they earn about 57% of bachelor’s degrees. The number of college-educated women in the adult population (ages 25 and older) surpassed the number of college-educated men in 2007. Does anyone fret about that imbalance created by loans, scholarships, affirmative action and unfair regulations?

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/20/u-s-women-near-milestone-in-the-college-educated-labor-force/ft_19-06-20_womenlaborforce_women-now-half-of-us-college-educated-labor-force-2/

So why are we still hearing about the “gap,” especially since for about 4 decades the college enrollment rate for females has exceeded males and for the younger demographic there is no gap given the same starting place and position? 

There’s a lot of mischief in gap statistics.  Especially college degrees.  Women, even in the same fields as men, may select different specialties—pediatrics instead of neuroscience, family law instead of corporate law, bibliographer instead of library director, or they may want to be an artist instead of a plumber or electrician. Women may decide to raise their own children and “stop-out” for 5-10 years, reentering the labor market with reduced value to employers.  Married women with husbands of equal education and financial status often have the luxury to leave the medical or law fields to start a business in a completely different direction such as interior design or selling craft items. 

Unfortunately, these “justice” studies rarely compare women with women—female doctors with female pre-school directors, or female TV hosts with female owners of bed and breakfasts, or female chefs with female dishwashers, female traffic court judges with female circuit court judges. Why not compare single women who are heads of household with married women who have no children?  In the universe of women employees there are gaps with men, but there are overlaps also, with low end of the bell curve  the men who clean the offices of  wealthy women politicians like Pelosi and Warren who are sitting at the high end of the bell curve.

What is concerning to me is that college educated women increasingly vote for Democrats, seeing themselves still as needing additional help from the government to manage their lives.

Gender Pay Gap

This is nothing new.  Twenty years ago a study involving librarians found out the same thing—choices.  And that was within just one field where all studied had an advanced degree.

“Progressives claim that the pay difference between men and women is caused by sexism that government must redress. But a new study offers compelling evidence that the choices and priorities of women account for much of the disparity.”  Wall St. Journal, Nov. 23, 2018

There’s a pay wall so I won’t provide a link, but I’ll snoop around to see who the editors are citing.  But here are some recent 2016 -  2018 stories on the subject.

https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/the-gender-pay-gap-is-explained-by-womens-choices-say-the-young-turks/

“Jordan B. Peterson has discussed this pressure women face at length: years 25-35 are exactly when one gets their career going, but also the best biological window to have children. Women who work through those years see a huge financial payoff, but may miss out on the child-bearing window. And women who choose babies will miss out on the profit-reaping window.

But the choice is still up to the woman. It’s not rampant sexism which explains the pay gap. A woman’s choice explains the pay gap. Can we stop blaming sexism in the workforce for at least this issue? Please?”

I loved my career, but there are few days at work that are worth bundling up the baby, struggling with a car seat, dropping him off at a sitter/daycare where the woman in charge won’t love him as much as you do.

This 2016 article was cited in November 18 at a business journal, and may have caught the eye of the WSJ.

It says, and I concur: https://www.chicagobusiness.com/opinion/why-do-women-earn-less-we-choose

“Here's what Goldin's research shows: First, there's almost no gender wage gap among younger workers: Women in their late 20s make 92 cents for every dollar a comparable male worker makes. But women in their early 50s make just 71 cents compared to comparable male workers, according to Goldin's research. Why does that matter? Because it indicates that the gap is better explained by differences in experience between men and women over their life cycles than by gender.

Second, the gaps differ by industry. When Goldin analyzed college-educated, white-collar workers, she found that for those in science and tech, the gender wage gap is remarkably small, but for lawyers, along with those in business and finance, the gap is much wider. Goldin's research notes that female MBA holders with children shift to positions with lower pay but more flexibility. Half of female MBA holders studied who work part time are self-employed, mainly because of a lack of existing part-time opportunities. Similar trends hold true for women with law degrees.”

I’m surprised Goldin can keep her job! 

Kellyanne Conway--the woman who put Trump in office

 
Kellyanne will turn 50 the day her candidate becomes president. She was raised on a farm by her mother, grandmother and aunts. Married at 34, she had her four children in late 30s and early 40s. She's a success in a business overwhelmingly owned by men, shutting out all the talking heads and experts (even Rove who seems to be wrong more than he's right). She turned down contracts for data sets she thought immoral. She's strongly pro-life. She says family time should not mean everyone is looking at a different screen.

http://www.hoover.org/research/kellyanne-conway-discusses-presidential-election-2016

Yes, m’am, women are interested in different things

Yesterday some guy from Apple (I’ve never heard of) got himself into deep do-do by commenting on how women search for music differently than men.  Now he’s been forced to walk it back and apologize!  (It actually made sense to me, having been a young girl thinking about boys at one time.)  Apparently, this angel investor, Christina Brodbeck, co-founder of YouTube which made her fabulously wealthy when she and the other two sold it to Google for for $1.65 billion in stock in 2006, also chooses at least some of her investments based on relationships and “things that interest” her. Really, do you think a guy  (she does have a male co-investor) would have come up with Icebreak, which helps couples increase understanding, excitement, and connection in their relationships.

“Christina was on the founding team of YouTube, the company's first UI Designer, and then later went on to lead design for the company's mobile efforts.

Before that, she worked at NASA Ames, MRL Ventures, and Keynote Systems. She's a proud Chicagoland native and attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She holds a master's in Instructional Technologies and Multimedia Design, and is passionate about building technology that makes people happy and improves their everyday lives.

Christina lives in San Francisco.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gV2nxO0y78E

Income inequality?

Is this income inequality or job choice?  The owner of a local commercial and residential moving company, Two men and a Truck (franchise), is a woman, Gail Kelley. Right now, you can interview for a job at $12/hour lifting and moving heavy objects, but after 21 years as the owner, Ms. Kelley probably makes a lot more.

The President needs to know there are choices people make that can account for their success.  According to ColumbusCEO she originally wanted to be a ballerina, but failed. Then she wanted to be an artist (has a BFA from CCAD). After working for Radio Shack for 16 years, she and her husband bought this franchise and moved to Columbus. Now after business success she has started painting and is selling her work. Business success has allowed her to be an artist.

Income inequality?

Inequality? Income gap? Actually white collar workers and particularly CEOs or business owners may work 60-70 hours a week, some with no vacation for years if they are owners of small businesses. Why are they demonized by this President? Years ago when a $60,000/year salary was pretty good money for a new college graduate, I knew a young woman in the investment field and thought she had it pretty good--and she did (and still does and now makes 6 figures with a stay at home husband to watch the kids and manage the household help and investments), however, she was working 70-80 hours a week at 21 for that salary and sharing a tiny apartment in New York with 2 other  women. The Wall St. company brought in catered meals--entry level workers didn't even get a break for lunch or dinner. Her annual income today should not be compared with other women who have made different choices, like working part time, or a 37.5 hour week, or 10 months a year so they can be home in the summer with the kids, or going into the arts or becoming a pastor. Oh yes, the first job for this honor student was below minimum wage as a summer resort waitress working for tips.

Wishing women well

I watched an interview with a young Cleveland woman competing in an invention contest at Wal-Mart. If she wins, thousands of Wal-Marts will be marketing her product.  It's a "table shade," and she has a patent.  She was quite excited about the opportunity.  I wonder how many corporate giants offer prizes for inventions.

Yesterday I was chatting with the woman who cleans the lobby and women’s restroom at the local hotel.  While she cleaned the floors and I used the stall, we discussed the early starting date for schools.  I asked about her children.  “My boy is getting his Master’s degree in Chicago, and my daughter will be a junior in college in Toledo,” she said.  I don’t know why she’s cleaning restrooms with that “pay it forward” genealogy, maybe she just wants some extra spending money for Christmas, or maybe she’s writing a novel about how people are treated in service jobs.

Although I don’t remember her name (many people we meet at Lakeside we see only a week or two in the summer), but we took a number of art classes together within the last decade, I recognized her coming into a lecture yesterday. I remembered our chats after class and how sweet and encouraging she always was.   Her husband was leading her and she had that recognizable shuffle of dementia.  So sad.  But his loving care and attention was even sweeter.  Another friend we’ve known perhaps 20 years and who is still doing things alone also has Alzheimer’s, according to her husband. Very talented and active in community affairs, her bright sparkling personality will be (is) missed.

I got my summer LAS News from the U. of I. today.  Interesting story about Christina Brodbeck, one of the 3 U. of I. students who developed YouTube. They sold it in 2006 to Google for $1.65 billion in stock.  Now in her early 30s she is an “angel investor” and has invested in 22 start ups. She came to the U. of I. to study history (AB ‘0l, History) and also studied Russian.  She picked up a book on HTML and taught herself web design.  Later she got an advanced degree in multimedia design at San Francisco State University.

A war against women led by the king of food stamps

Women in technology

It's biology. I'd noticed that there hadn't been much of an increase in female faces and names in article I see about technology--especially the business end of it. I suspected it had something to do with babies--and this writer thinks so too.

Having children instead of startups

And this is why women don’t have startups: children. It’s not a complicated answer. It’s a sort of throw-back-to-the-50’s answer. You could argue the merits of this, but you could not argue the merits of this with any woman who has kids and has a startup.

There’s a reason that women start more businesses than men, but women only get 3% of the funding that men do. The reason is that women want a lifestyle business. Women want to control their time, control their work, to be flexible for their kids. This seems reasonable: Women start more lifestyle businesses and men start more venture-funded businesses. This does not, on face value, seem inherently problematic.

But wait, let’s ask why so many men with kids are doing startups? Why aren’t they with their kids? A startup is like six full-time jobs. Where does that leave the kids? We use social service funding to tell impoverished families that it’s important for dads to spend time with their kids. But what about startup founders? Is it okay for them to leave their kids in favor of 100-hour weeks? For many founders, their startup is their child.

The Ford Women

In today's Wall St. Journal there is a very attractive ad for women in the automotive industry. Apparently Automotive News did a feature on 100 of them. The photo includes 19 executive women at Ford (2 are not in the photo). So I took a closer, fashion look to see if there's something to be learned. I'm assuming they all had a little help with make-up and style, maybe not the two from "What not to wear" on TLC, but at least an advisor.

Of the 19 women in the Ford photo

1. 15 are in pants, 4 are in skirts
   
2. 13 are wearing black and white
   
3. 5 are in shades of grey
   
4. 1 is wearing a taupe jacket with black (Barb Samardzich, 51, who might be at the highest level, although I don't know the meaning of all the job titles
   
5. only one woman is black, none are Asian, if any are Hispanic, they must be more Spanish than Indian because I couldn't tell
   
6. only one had a really short hair cut
   
7. 7 had shoulder length or longer hair styles
   
8. 9 had chin length hair styles
   
9. one had ear lobe length hair
   
10. one had below the chin, above the shoulder length hair
    
11. only two appeared to be overweight
    
12. only one appeared to really thin (hard to tell)
    
13. all had fabulous shoes and good make-up

Good job, ladies.

Evolving online business, from books to writing

Today I stopped by an online book selling business blog (the blog was about the business which was at another site) that I sort of enjoyed, and discovered the owner had discontinued that effort, but is now writing for other online businesses. She'd become successful enough at finding and selling books, that she had begun to outsource, which cut into her profits and her fun. Story here. Now she's created a new site for her new business as a copywriter.