10,000 Ohio Jobs Up in the Air Pending DHL and UPS Air Service Consolidation

Oh no! German mail carrier DHL may consolidate their North American air delivery service with UPS. Should that occur, the DHL North American hub, located in Wilmington, Ohio, will be closed. Some 10,000 jobs would be lost!

The issue has become a point of contention between the US and Germany. A possible anti-trust suit may be brought by the US against DHL. Both presidential candidates have voiced their concern over the merger. The State of Ohio and representatives of Ohio are particularly disconcerted. Says Democratic Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown:

"They [Wilmington] laid out the welcome mat for DHL by providing more than $400 million in incentives.Workers and their families rightfully feel betrayed by the callous decision made by Deutsche Post. This is a foreign company that frankly hasn't played it straight with us."

Hopefully, this talk will scare DHL from finalizing the deal with UPS. But even if the deal is struck down, what will become of the DHL plant in Wilmington? As the hub of its North American operations, perhaps it is too important to shut down without a way to maintain its share of the US/Canadian markets. Time will tell just how valuable the Wilmington hub truly is.

Read Der Spiegel International's article DHL Hub Closure? by Mark Pitzke.

You're On Your Own Eritrea and Ethiopia: UN Peacekeepers to Depart

War is the likely outcome of the long standing border dispute between Eritrea and Ethiopia, now that the UN peacekeeping mission has committed to withdrawal. The UN mission was disabled after Eritrea began restricting access to the border. The UN Security council voted unanimously today to end the peacekeeping mission between the two countries. Tomorrow, the end of the mission will be official.

This is an unfortunate outcome to a situation that has been brewing and spewing forth for the last 15 years since Eritrea's independence from Ethiopia. The declaration of independence was interpreted by some as a colonial constructed identity crisis for Eritreans. Prior to Italian occupation of Abyssinia (now Ethiopia and Eritrea) preceding the Second World War, there was not a true Eritrean identity. It is said that the colonial government somehow managed to construct the Eritrean identity, as was the case of ethnic identities in many colonized areas of Africa. 

Regardless of the causes of the split, it severely crippled Ethiopia as it left the country landlocked. And as anyone who has ever taken a class on international economics and economic development knows, a lack of access to the seas translates into a severe handicap for a nation's economy. Perhaps this explains Ethiopia's perpetually stagnant economic performance and lack of development.

 It would be preferable for the mission to maintain the boundary, but it seems that this is no longer possible due  to the lack of cooperation from both sides. Gun shots have already been fired. The only question left is when will the war begin? Read the the AP article on CNN's site.

World Gun Violence

I found this map to be very interesting. Who knew that Mexico has a higher rate of gun death than the US? It is important to note, though, that among the core countries, the US has by far the highest rate of gun deaths. Furthermore, the peripheral countries that are characterized by a higher number of gun deaths are either destabilized by warfare, as is the case in many of the Sub Saharan African countries, or places where mobsters and drug lords operate. Thus, America's position is not as enviable as it might appear.

A Brief Communist Rant

The city dwelling bourgeois demands cheap labor to deliver their fancy lattes and serve as their doorman, but they certainly do not want affordable housing in their neighborhood where those service people might be able to live, as that would be near suicide for property values. Those poor bourgeois. Meanwhile, we non-salaried, minimum wage workers are stuffed miles away from the people we service in unsafe conditions (see Harlem and the Bronx at the service of Manhattanites), so as to not create an eyesore. This arrangement works out quite nicely for the affluent, as they get the service they demand without any low income spillover. Oh to be bourgeois!

The Graduate Record Exam: Vocabulary

Casey and I have begun studying for the GRE. We go to our local Barnes & Noble and use one of their Princeton Review study guides. Don't tell B&N! I feel so very incompetent. My vocabulary is especially ignominious. (YAY! New word!) For those of you who are gifted, or whose parents have cultivated in you a grand vocabulary (like my boyfriend), please wipe that supercilious look from your face (YAY! Another!) Below is the first list of words I have compiled. I have decided to divide words into groups based on similar definitions, and maybe sometimes antonyms. The first group of words all have to do with lacking energy or weakness. Some of them I was familiar with. The other words I have just never seen and or used.

1. listless

2. languid

3. lassitude

4. indolent

5. wan

6. supine

Alas, I feel so supine after learning all these new words... the lassitude of a summer afternoon nap is calling...

A $10 Twinkie?

It may sound crazy, but $10 is the true cost of a Twinkie, according to anthropologist Richard Robbins. The cheap price we pay now is due to directly and indirectly subsidized transportation and sugar.  The other $9.85 in externalities that the Twinkie costs is hidden, that is, paid for by society. These hidden costs consist of the aforementioned subsidies in transportation and agriculture, environmental damage from processing and growing sugar, and the damage to our health caused from eating processed foods. Read Robbin's The Political Economy of Twinkies for more information. 

Also, check out The Apple vs. the Twinkie in the Washington Times Editorials. Twinkies are four times cheaper than apples, despite all of the value added required to process the sugar into unrecognizable goo. The author argues that agricultural subsidies, which primarily benefit megafarms, are to blame. The result: Americans' consumption of Twinkies, along with their wasteline, is growing.

Defense Industry Political Contributions

I found an interesting bit of information recently. In the current election cycle, weapons industries, with the exception of Lockheed, are contributing more heavily to Democrats than to Republicans. The figure is that $8.5 million is going to Dems, and $7.8 million going to Republicans. Does anyone know why that is? Assuming most Democrats agree with Obama, then we will not be going to war anytime soon with Iran. Wouldn't it be more lucrative for these industries to invest in the Republicans, since they are the war mongering party? 

Perhaps they feel that Obama is going to have an overwhelming victory over McCain, in which case, all they money they have paid might get them special treatment in Obama's plan to refocus on Afganistan.

In any case, opensecrets.org is a fascinating website. The quantity of dollars that some of these industries contribute is hard to read. For defense spending, go to Open Secrets' defense page. They also have every other kind of political contribution on record!

New York: The Most Expensive City

Will I ever be able to realize my dream of becoming a New Yorker? Probably not... at least not in a financially comfortable way. Read Paying the Price for Living in New York  by Courtney Gross from the Gotham Gazette:

"New Yorkers already pay a high price to live here, and the cost of everything from a subway ride to tap water keeps going up."

Also, check out escapebrooklyn.blogspot.com for the perspective of a woman's plan to escape NYC. It is really well done; I am frankly jealous of her page. She moved to Brooklyn (supposedly the cheap part of New York) years ago, loved it at first, and now realizes she can't get ahead financially, despite a career in nonprofit. It is painful and depressing to read her count out every last penny she spends. Maybe New York isn't for me.... 

America's Culture of Debt

A great explanation of the current conundrum we find ourselves in, and much more logical than my previous posting! America's Culture of Debt in IHT Opinion Page by David Brooks.

The Chagrin of a soon-to-be college grad

In a word, I am DISTRESSED. The US economy is out of control. Our country’s debt is skyrocketing (bought by China Inc.), Americans’ personal debt is following suit to lenders, and what is normally our most valuable asset, our home, is, in some cases, worth half of the mortgage borrowed in its namesake. What with the skyrocketing price of oil, on which the economy has been stupidly founded, we are in real danger of economic disaster on the scale of the Great Depression. The dollar is plummeting in value, while prices continue to soar, in recognition of that fact.

All of this means different things for different people. For the baby boomers (the ones who are not billionaires,) this manifests itself as a shrinking nest egg for retirement. (Perhaps shrinking is too weak – shriveling.) For many corporate CEOs, the economy in its current state is a cash cow. Even when their companies fail, they walk away with millions of dollars in severance. For middle-aged professionals, perhaps they can no longer depend on returning to work tomorrow.

But for people like me, (or the person I will be at the end of this academic year,) that is, fresh graduates looking to begin their professional lives, the economy is perhaps even more bleak. We are in desperate need for a job to start repaying all the debt we have accumulated over the four to six years we’ve spent in undergrad and graduate schools. We were promised the world… “Get an education, and you can do whatever your heart desires.” Some crock of bullshit that has turned out to be. Lending institutions have taken advantage of our naiveté, cashing in on all those student loans we needed to fund our study abroad that would “pay itself back in a few years.” Yet another lie financial and academic institutions have worked together to propagate.

Unfortunately for us, there are no jobs that can help us pay those loans back. We students, who followed our dreams, pursuing liberal arts degrees with no clear career track like professional degrees, are stuck working in the service sector, or maybe, nonprofit sector, earning barely the minimum wage, and hardly a livable wage. Furthermore, those jobs exist in bulk only in big cities, where the cost of living greatly exceeds what the wages we are offered can sustain.

I suppose all we young people can do is resign ourselves to destitution, and hate our baby boomer parents and grand parents for enjoying higher standards of living than we ever will.