Young Guns

 Bring It On

      A trio of young gun journalists shared their insight, experience and enthusiasm with City College of San Francisco Online Journalism students on April 15. All three have blazed trails through journalism's new high tech frontier to jobs at leading news organizations.

Nathan Olivarez-Giles,
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Staking a Claim

        Nathan Olivarez-Giles is currently a journalist for the Wall Street Journal. “I am leading the push at the Journal to develop a new type of journalism” he said. Olivarez-Giles is pushing the boundaries and tearing down the distinct borders that once divided print and other communication media. Ever since high school he’s been fascinated with technology. Now he combines writing, photography, video and technology in innovative ways to tell any story that needs to be told.

  Olivarez-Giles advice was simple, “Soak up and learn as much as possible from every opportunity that you can.” He holds an entrepreneurial spirit at heart and he is ever willing to hop in the saddle to new tech frontiers.

 

Brian X. Chen, courtesy of Google Images

            Ben X. Chen, author of the popular book Always On, rode his book notoriety and his interests in technology all the way to the prestigious New York Times. These days, Chen writes about the never-ending patent wars mostly among Apple, Samsung, Motorola and Verizon.

He uses Twitter to share analysis, point to good stories, and to share comments with his tech heavy network.  

 

Mark Milian
Courtesy of Google Images

 

Mark Milian was focused on Silicon Valley like a California gold-rush prospector. He thought he could bring something new to tech world. Today he writes for Bloomberg News about how technology is affecting remote cultures.  
 

“Radio, TV and digital video is the new thing that advertisers will pay top dollar for,” Milian said. “We’re still figuring out the best practices.”


 

  
Gold in the Hills
            All three found tech to be the new frontier to practice a time-honored craft of telling good stories. They embraced technology and in doing so stuck the mother lode.
 

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What is a Dollar’s Worth?

Is it Useful?

     Actually, a dollar’s value depends on what it buys. Marginal utility is a fancy economic term to describe the amount of value a person derives from spending on a product or service. It is another piece of the puzzle that helps us evaluate and gauge the basis for a living wage.

Making choices

     Take a look at these pictures and decide which is most important for every individual’s well being:

Choice A

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                                    Food versus Yacht  

Choice B

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          Clothing versus Jewelry

Choice C

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Courtesy of Google Images

                      House versus Plane

Smart Shoppers

     Those living on a minimum or living wage are smart when it comes to marginal utility. They intuitively know that dollars spent on food, clothing and shelter will provide a bigger bang for their buck. Whereas, the benefit they could derive from a yacht, jewelry or a private plane is just less obvious.

     Saying it another way, minimum wage earners see that dollars spent on food, clothing and shelter have more utility. In essence, they extract more marginal utility from every dollar spent on the basics.

Getting their money’s worth

     As a group, people earning a minimum or living wage derive among the highest marginal utility rates. Dollars spent by this group are in effect worth more.

Minimum wage earners win the Dollar Marathon

The Speed of Money

     Ding! Each time you open your wallet and spend a dollar a race begins. Spending dollars sets off a chain reaction of possibilities. You pay the coffee shop for a latte. The coffee shop owner takes your dollar, along with several others, and goes to the hair stylist. The stylist, now flush with her own dollars, brings her pet to the pet groomers; and on and on it goes.

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     Dollars are the lifeblood or our economic system. The quicker a dollar moves from one person to the next, the greater the economic activity that is generated. This is known as the velocity of money.

     The velocity of money was at an all time high before the Great Recession of 2008.  People felt secure. They were willing to take risks. Taking risks happens when people are willing to invest, buy more, and save less.

Boom or Bust
     During classic economic boom times, the velocity of money streaks through the dollar marathon breaking all sorts of records.

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     When the Great Recession hit though, many people became fearful and insecure. They closed their collective purses tightly and hung on to every dollar. Spending was exhausted.

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Time Out!  
      The velocity of money hit a dramatic speed bump, in part, because people were unwilling to spend. When push came to shove, people only spent when they had to. They saved the rest. Savings is like a non-productive time out in the dollar marathon.

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The Winners

     However, the spending habits of the minimum wage earners stayed exactly the same. These folks are the winners of the dollar marathon every time. They have the highest money velocity rates of all consumer groups.  

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The Gracious Winners

     For the minimum wage earners, every dollar that comes in goes out. Incremental increases to a living wages get spent too because marginal utility rates for every dollar for this group are also high. This group would stimulate the most economic growth if they had more money to spend.

     Minimum wage earners are actually heroes. They saves our economy by spending money regardless of a boom or bust times giving the rest of us a breather until we are ready to join the next dollar marathon.

Courtesy of Google.Images

Breaking News

 

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April 10, 2014 

Minnesota raises the minimum wage to $9.50 by 2016

April 7, 2014

Maryland raises minimum wage to $10.10 by 2018

April 7, 2014

Minnesota considering raising minimum wage to $9.50 by 2016

April 7, 2014

San Francisco considering raising the minimum wage to $15

March 27, 2014

Connecticut raises minimum wage to $10.10 by 2017

March 18, 2014

Richmond, Calif. raises minimum wage to $11.52 by 2016

March 15, 2014

 House defeats minimum wage increase

Blame it on Henry Ford

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Henry Ford is best remembered for his car, the Ford. He was an entrepreneur at heart who saw the bigger picture when it came to automobiles. In his mind, it was no contest between the car versus the buggy.

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Ford understood the power of his concept. He envisioned a time when everyone would want to own a car. In fact, some say he created the American Dream. 

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He knew how to produce his car too. Ford is credited with inventing and perfecting the assembly line. Yet Ford had some hurdles to overcome to mass production. He needed to both train and keep skilled workers in his factory.

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He hit upon a novel idea. On January 5, 1914, Ford announced his $5 for an eight hour day pay program for autoworkers that were over age 22 and had worked at his factory for greater than six months. He called it his profit-sharing program.

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 For some, $5 was double the wages they had been making. It caused an outrage among other business owners.He is credited with kick starting the middle class too.
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Ford's workers' were wealthy enough that they could buy the luxury items they produced like a car. Ford started what is now known as a virtuous cycle where people with extra money were creating more demand for the goods being produced.

Breaking News

The Living Wage Fills the Gap

A Living Wage 

      The living wage is the notion that people, who work full time, 40 hours per week, should be able to afford a basic standard of living within a community. Unlike the minimum wage, the living wage is not set by law or by any governmental body. A living wage might be thought of as a socially accepted baseline that is one step above the poverty line.

What are the basics?

     In the United States, the basics generally mean food, clothing, shelter, utilities, transportation, health care, and includes minimal recreation.  The basics do not necessarily include an ability to save for retirement, acquire any skill development or education, or an ability to care for a sick family member.

Minimum Wage versus Living Wage

      The minimum wage, as originally conceived, was designed to provide for a basic living standard. Yet there is an ever-widening gap between what the minimum wage can provide and what it takes to have a standard of living that provides just the above mentioned basics. The concept of the living wage became popular because popular culture discerned that the minimum wage was not keeping pace with what it costs to live independently today..

Breaking News

The Minimum Wage is Born

The Minimum Wage

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     A minimum wage is the lowest rate at which a worker legally can be paid for their labor in the United States.
     . Labor is a broad term but basically it means doing another’s work for a fee. The Minimum Wage Law is the law of the land. Violators can be prosecuted for not paying a minimum wage.

Who sets it?

     The U.S. minimum wage rate is set by the United States Labor Department under authority provided by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FSLA). It was created after the Great Depression of the 1930s. It established a national minimum wage and prohibited employment of minors to stop child labor. Currently the minimum wage rate is $7.25 per hour. 

What is the point?

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In part, the purpose of the FLSA was to establish a minimum wage rate and to limit the number of hours worked for a standard week. During the Great Depression, it was widely felt workers were being exploited for cheap labor by their employers.

The current poster child for a minimum wage job is the Wal-Mart greeter. A Wal-Mart greeter starting pay is $7.25 per hour. Today. there are numerous examples of low paid workers. At full-time employment, these jobs cannot provide a basic standard of living.

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