Bullies at Work

According to a new Zogby poll:

Half of working Americans (49%) have suffered or witnessed workplace bullying -- including verbal abuse, job sabotage, abuse of authority or destruction of workplace relationships, according to a new Workplace Bullying Institute/Zogby Interactive survey.

The study is here.

When I was a teenager in New Jersey, I took a summer job in a machine tool shop.  My job was cleaning the grease and metal chips off the floor, walls and machines. By days end, we were covered head to toe with grease and chips: Try scrubbing grease filled metal chips off your face sometime (ouch).  It was a rough place.  The machinists drank beer every break and smoked weed back out behind the factory. Fights were common. One day one of my high-school age peers, about 16 years old, was cleaning up around a machine and one of the machinists just hauled off and slugged him in the face, blood spewing everywhere. He broke his nose. I thought it was an isolated incident. I guess not.

For some insight into the reality of factory life, check out Ben Hamper's phenomenal Rivethead: Tales from the Assembly Line.

The Zogby study is disturbing showing how prevalent workplace bullying is: It is impossible for people to be creative in this kind of work environment.

Has this happened to you?

A Nation of Immigrants

Charles Hirschman provides a solid history of immigration's impact on American society.Click here to download.

Different Firm Productivity

So, where does all that different firm productivity come from?  Why, from technology of course.  (It is the "canned" answer, but it does explain at least part of the difference.)  Both, me and my dissertation would argue that other innovations, including management skill, also plays an important role.

However, Stuart Elliot of the National Research Council’s Center for Education offers an interesting take on where the application of all this new technology is going to lead us....

To the displacement (nice way to say elimination) of 60% (yep, SIX-OH percent) of the current U.S. workforce (or at least the jobs they are doing).  In Projecting the Impact of Computers on Work in 2030, Elliot organized data on 93 of the 96 groups of occupations used in the Department of Labor’s Standard Occupational Classification system (information was not available for military-specific occupations). For each of these occupational groups, values were then provided on a seven-point scale for four types of skills: language, reasoning, vision and movement.

Using information about current artificial intelligence research and postulating on the exponential increase of computational processing power in the future, Elliot paints a picture of the functionality of computers in language, reasoning, vision and movement skills by 2030. As computers are able to complete certain tasks faster and more cheaply than humans, those tasks may shift from human performance to computer performance. For example, the study predicts that 90 percent of current office and administrative support occupations will be displaced by technology in this period. But not all occupations are expected to fair the same. Legal occupations, including lawyers, are only predicted to see 6 percent of their jobs displaced.

posted by Kevin Stolarick

Inequality and Productivity

Does the growing disparity in productivity rates of firms play a role in growing inequality? This study says yes (pointer via Tyler Cowen). Charlotta Mellander and I have been studying the  disjuncture between wages and income and their relation to human capital levels and creative occupations in our work on Sweden and the United States. This adds a new wrinkle to that conversation.

Canadian versus American Real Estate

The Toronto Real Estate Blog puts it this way:

The market across Canada is hot-hot-hot, according to the Toronto Real Estate Blog. It quotes one real estate expert as saying, a "fiasco" like the US housing market can't happen, "because there is no sub-prime lending market here."

The full story is here, along with a related story on the white-hot market in Toronto.

What could account for such dramatically divergent patterns?

Cool Older Brother or Crazy Drunk Uncle?

David Vickery writes:

So in a period of just six years America has transformed itself in the eyes of the creative class from the cool older brother who cound initiate you into what is new and exciting to the crazy drunk uncle, who you have to humor in order to minimize the damage he might cause.

The rest is here. Do you agree or disagree?

The Prosperity Institute

If you've been wondering what brought us to Toronto...

Last Tuesday, there was an event at the Rotman School to announce our new Prosperity Institute.  The Institute was spearheaded by the vision of Rotman Dean, Roger Martin, and underwritten with a generous $50 million gift from Premier Dalton McGuinty and the Province of Ontario, and a $10 million gift from Joe and Sandy Rotman. Additional fund-raising of an additional $50 million is underway I'll head the Institute with Kevin Stolarick as Associate Director.  Our goal is to make it the world's premier think-tank on place and prosperity.

Here's a story on the Institute's launch event Tuesday night. More - much, much more - to come.

We'd very much appreciate your thoughts on what might be the most novel and pressing areas for research, data development and projects?

Consumer City

Graham Bowley writes:

Cities may also be growing because individuals as consumers want to live there. In a discussion paper titled "Consumer City," Glaeser and co-authors Jed Kolko and Albert Saiz call this "the demand for density." People now want to live in dense areas because dense areas offer what people want to consume - opera, sports teams, art museums, varied cuisine. In France, for example, he and his fellow researchers found a robust correlation between the number of restaurants and the growth of cities.

The full story is here (pointer via Wendy Waters who has a bunch of great posts over at All About Cities). 

Homeownership and Economic Growth

The conventional wisdom says homeownership is a growth spur. This was especially the case in the fordist mass production economy, where long-term employment was the rule for many and home-buying prompted purchases of automobiles, appliances and consumer durables.

Now, maybe not so much. That is, according to new analysis by Joe Cortright which suggests that homeownership may actually dampen economic performance in this highly mobile creative age.

More here (via CEOs for Cities.

What Goes Around ...

Bill Fulton writes:

So I’ve finally had it with Joel Kotkin. ...Increasingly, it seems that the only thing we can count on him for – in newspaper op-eds, anyway – is to disagree with the conventional wisdom, no matter what it is. In fact, as time goes on, Kotkin – ever the contrarian – seems to spend more and more time disagreeing with planners and commentators who mostly agree with him.

It's a very thoughtful post and stays completely clear of any Kotkin-Florida debate issues, except perhaps indirectly.

The full story is here (pointer via Planetizen).

Kids First

Kevin Stolarick of the Creative Class Group and Lisa Taber of FortiusOne have paired up to develop a series of 'heat maps' that show the hottest places in the country based on your lifestage and some preselected criteria.  The maps allow you to zoom in on specific parts of the country or see how your current city compares to others.

Kids First Map

Come back Monday to see next week's map: Just Wanna Have Fun!

Car Sharing to Save Detroit?

In addition to seeing hybrids all over the place, I see a lot of Zipcars and Flexcars in metro areas. (To be honest, it bothers me that they get reserved spots with no meters in many towns, but I digress.) This new model of car ownership/use, the sharing model, seems to be taking off and many innovative organizations are getting on board.

Equity Residential Properties, a huge publicly traded apartment building operator, recently inked a deal with Zipcar to provide cars and spaces at some of its properties. Today's WSJ (sub req'd) features an article by Darren Everson highlighting how Zipcar is 'driving' into the college market by inking deals with Universities to put cars in and around campuses.

Perhaps Detroit's long suffering car makers should think about this new model of ownership in trying to revive US sales/revenues? With many of the user's of car share services in college and just starting their careers, this seems like a growing consumption trend that Detroit would want to take advantage of?

posted by David

Room to Grow

Kevin Stolarick of the Creative Class Group and Lisa Taber of FortiusOne have paired up to develop a series of 'heat maps' that show the hottest places in the country based on your lifestage and some preselected criteria.  The maps allow you to zoom in on specific parts of the country or see how your current city compares to others.

Room to Grow Map

Come back Monday to see next week's map: Kids First

Creative View of Real Estate Value

Its hard to avoid talking about housing in the US right now. From the supposed 'sub-prime' meltdown to slow sales and rising mortgage rates; writers, pundits, and traders are having a field day. Check out this fascinating Op-Ed by David Ranson in today's WSJ (sub required). He offers some great economic insights from Milton Friedman and argues that US housing is undervalued right now. Its always nice to listen to  theories that challenge the conventional wisdom. Read the long snippet below and let us know if its time to go house hunting for a bigger place!

posted by David

Super-Star Neighborhoods

Upscale urban real estate markets continue to be spared in the growing real estate downturn,according to this story in the Baltimore Sun.  Some DC markets even continue to appreciate, the story reports. These are communities with high levels of gay, bohemian and creative class concentrations. The fact of the matter is that these neighborhoods are unique and authentic. They can't be replicated with new construction. I've long said that housing prices are the best indicator of the real demand for place.  My guess is that the "split" in the housing market will grow wider over time, as folks realize these kind of communities are not only great places to live but have characteristics that will "protect" their investment in the short as well as the long-run.

Like Being a DINK

Kevin Stolarick of the Creative Class Group and Lisa Taber of FortiusOne have paired up to develop a series of 'heat maps' that show the hottest places in the country based on your lifestage and some preselected criteria.  The maps allow you to zoom in on specific parts of the country or see how your current city compares to others.

Like Being a DINK Map

Come back Monday to see next week's map: Room to Grow

Diversity Rising

"In a further sign of the United States’ growing diversity, nonwhites now make up a majority in almost one-third of the most-populous counties in the country and in nearly one in 10 of all 3,100 counties, according to an analysis of census results to be released today. ... From July 1, 2005, to July 1, 2006, metropolitan Chicago edged out Honolulu in Asian population, and Washington inched ahead of El Paso in the number of Hispanic residents. In black population, Houston overtook Los Angeles."

Full story is here.

Brain Attractors

When mayors and economic developers talk about talent (not nearly enough, mind you), they usually get vexed over young people moving away from their community.  That's mainly missing the point.  People move (out) all the time. And of course young, highly-educated people move most of all. What separates winners and losers in the talent game is the ability to attract new blood.  A new study from the New York Fed (pointer from Jim Russell) finds that:

sluggish regional economies do not have high out-migration rates. ...In fact, better performing economies had higher out-migration rates than poorer performing ones.  [W]eaker regional economies have lower immigration rates.

The top-performing states have in-migration rates three or more times higher than poorest performers.  Boy, I'd love to see this kind of data for metro regions.

Sex, Money, and the City

Lots of good debate here and especially here on Kevin's post about the recent study on how young women in their 20s and 30s now out-earn men in New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Boston, Chicago and Minneapolis.

Now add this to the mix: A 2005 study by Columbia University economist, Lisa Edlund found that while young women outnumber young men in most urban areas of the world, men out earn women at all ages in most of these cities. She attributes the difference to the “asymmetries of the marriage market.”  Men, she writes, “pay women for marriage” - that is, for the relatively higher costs women occur in having and raising children.

From a strictly economic perspective, I think this means cities are now better places for young women than young men. What say you?

Is Diversity Bad for Cities?

It has become increasingly popular to speak of racial and ethnic diversity as a civic strength. From multicultural festivals to pronouncements from political leaders, the message is the same: our differences make us stronger. But a massive new study, based on detailed interviews of nearly 30,000 people across America, has concluded just the opposite. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam -- famous for Bowling Alone" his 2000 book on declining civic engagement -- has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.

Read the full story here.

Your thoughts?

List-Mania

Green Cities, here.

E-mail addicted cities, here. (I wonder if I am part cause on this one).

Jurassic School

While were on the topic of lists ...

There's new school, old school, and well ... this.

UPDATE: And this from the terrific Pittsburgh-blog, AntiRust.

New Explanation of Industrial Revolution

 

Dr. Gregory Clark has a new book "A Farewell to Alms" that offers a unique and very interesting explanation of the underlying causes and consequences of the industrial revolution.

The New York Times has a discussion about the book:

Gregory Clark, an economic historian at the University of California, Davis, believes that the Industrial Revolution — the surge in economic growth that occurred first in England around 1800 — occurred because of a change in the nature of the human population. The change was one in which people gradually developed the strange new behaviors required to make a modern economy work. The middle-class values of nonviolence, literacy, long working hours and a willingness to save emerged only recently in human history, Dr. Clark argues.

Generation after generation, the rich had more surviving children than the poor, his research showed. That meant there must have been constant downward social mobility as the poor failed to reproduce themselves and the progeny of the rich took over their occupations. “The modern population of the English is largely descended from the economic upper classes of the Middle Ages,” he concluded.

As the progeny of the rich pervaded all levels of society, Dr. Clark considered, the behaviors that made for wealth could have spread with them. He has documented that several aspects of what might now be called middle-class values changed significantly from the days of hunter gatherer societies to 1800. Work hours increased, literacy and numeracy rose, and the level of interpersonal violence dropped.

Another significant change in behavior, Dr. Clark argues, was an increase in people’s preference for saving over instant consumption, which he sees reflected in the steady decline in interest rates from 1200 to 1800.

Dr. Clark says the middle-class values needed for productivity could have been transmitted either culturally or genetically. But in some passages, he seems to lean toward evolution as the explanation. “Through the long agrarian passage leading up to the Industrial Revolution, man was becoming biologically more adapted to the modern economic world,” he writes. And, “The triumph of capitalism in the modern world thus may lie as much in our genes as in ideology or rationality.”

Full story here.

What does this say about today's post-industrial economy?

posted by Kevin Stolarick

Things that Make You Go Ugh

                                        

Pop star Lily Allen has had her US work visa cancelled after arriving at Los Angeles International Airport. ..."Lily was questioned and her work visa was revoked," Allen's spokesman said. "She was detained for five hours but not strip searched. Understandably she was upset by it." ...In a statement the singer said: "I am trying everything I can to sort this out. ..."It is my intention to play my American dates in September. This depends on the authorities granting me a new work visa.                

The full story from the BBC is here. Her blog post is here (and after the jump).

Starting a Family

Kevin Stolarick of the Creative Class Group and Lisa Taber of FortiusOne have paired up to develop a series of 'heat maps' that show the hottest places in the country based on your lifestage and some preselected criteria.  The maps allow you to zoom in on specific parts of the country or see how your current city compares to others.

Starting a Family Map 

Come back Monday to see next week's map: Like Being a DINK

Another Reason to Live in a Big City

The New York Times reports on a recent study that found the "wage gender gap" hasn't just disappeared, it's switched direction in some big cities.

Young women in New York and several of the nation’s other largest cities who work full time have forged ahead of men in wages, according to an analysis of recent census data. The shift has occurred in New York since 2000 and even earlier in Los Angeles, Dallas and a few other cities.

The analysis was prepared by Andrew A. Beveridge, a demographer at Queens College, who first reported his findings in Gotham Gazette, published online by the Citizens Union Foundation. It shows that women of all educational levels from 21 to 30 living in New York City and working full time made 117 percent of men’s wages, and even more in Dallas, 120 percent. Nationwide, that group of women made much less: 89 percent of the average full-time pay for men.

Full story here

posted by Kevin Stolarick

State Capitalism Anyone?

Many see the United States as the embodiment of entrepreneurial, flexible and innovative capitalism. Carl Schramm and Robert Litan of the Kauffman Foundation argue that the U.S. is an innovative mix of entrepreneurial and "big-firm" capitalism. But according to one recent analysis government plays a massive role in the US economy. The latest issue of Reason (pointer from Arnold Kling) cites a study by economic consultant Gary Shilling which shows that:.

More than half of all Americans--53 percent--now depend on government for their income. In 1950 the figure was just 28 percent...Shilling totaled up federal, state, and local government workers, plus private-sector workers who owe their jobs to government, plus recipients of Social Security, other transfer payments, and benefits such as food stamps. He also tacked on dependents...adjusting his figures to avoid double-counting...

Kling adds a pointer to Mark Trumbull's piece on Schilling's analysis in the Christian Science Monitor.

A Trend ...

ABC News reports that:

The number of U.S. citizens who moved to Canada last year hit a 30-year high, with a 20 percent increase over the previous year and almost double the number who moved in 2000. In 2006, 10,942 Americans went to Canada, compared with 9,262 in 2005 and 5,828 in 2000, according to a survey by the Association for Canadian Studies (hat tip: Kevin Stolarick).

Housing Cycle

Take a look at this graph of the Case-Shiller Home Price Index for 20 metros (hat tip: Martin Kenney). Over at MacroMarkets site, there's interesting maps and graphics where you can  look in detail at each of these markets.

UPDATE: While working on the references for Who's Your City, I came across this very recent and very interesting Shiller paper comparing the current housing cycle to historic turning points in real estate.

What's interesting here is how the pattern is on the one hand a pretty strong overall trend line, but on closer inspection seems to be made up of four clustered sub-markets. Some markets actually experienced very little appreciation, others more modest, whole some skyrocketed.  What do you think the future has in store?