Sunday, March 15, 2015

Phantom Jobs

Three jobs  came to my mind that existed much after 1940's. Toyota, Trader Joes, and Apple Inc.


Pre-Industrial Work: Daily life in pre-industrial times changed very little for Europeans. Almost all people lived and worked in the country. From 1300 to 1750, for the average peasant, people’s work and social life mixed, as families lived on small plots of land, growing crops mostly for home consumption. Children learned to milk cows, churn butter, and tend to farm animals. Generation after generation, rural families relied on tools that had changed little over the centuries, such as wooden plows dependent on beasts of burden to pull them. 
Trader Joes Inc: today’s modern day industrial job and provider. Provides fresh farm raised meats as well as produce, in grocery stores to the public.
Chain grocery retailing was a phenomenon that took off around the beginning of the twentieth century, and other small, regional players. Grocery stores of this era tended to be small (generally less than a thousand square feet) and also focused on only one aspect of food retailing. Grocers (and most of the chains fell into this camp) sold what is known as “dry grocery” items, or canned goods and other non-perishable staples. Butchers and greengrocers (produce vendors) were completely separate entities, although they tended to cluster together for convenience’s sake.

The Transition from feudalism to proto-industrialization: The concept of proto-industrialization became an influential one in economic history in the 1970s and 1980s. The term refers to a system of rural manufacture that was intermediate between autarchic feudal production and modern urban factory production. Variously described as rural manufacturing, domestic manufacture, cottage industry, and a "putting-out" system, it was a dispersed system of production that used traditional methods of production and extensive low-paid rural labor to produce goods for the market, both domestic and international. Unlike modern capitalist manufacturing, proto-industrialization did not depend on rising labor productivity as a source of higher profits; instead, merchants increased the scale of their businesses by extending production to additional households and workers. 
Toyota Inc. This changed society to another level. The ability transporting goods in vehicles that get you to where you need to be faster.


Factories and technological change: New techniques and technologies in agriculture paved the wave for change. Increasing amounts of food were produced over the century, ensuring that enough was available to meet the needs of the ever-growing population. A surplus of cheap agricultural labor led to severe unemployment and rising poverty in many rural areas. As a result, many people left the countryside to find work in towns and cities. So the scene was set for a large-scale, labor-intensive factory system.

APPLE INC.  would be an example of today’s modern industry. The company changed the world.For more than three decades, Apple Computer was predominantly a manufacturer of personal computers, including the Apple II, Macintosh and Power Maclines but it faced rocky sales and low market share during the 1990s. Jobs, who had been ousted from the company in 1985, returned to Apple in 1996 after his company NeXt was bought by Apple. The following year he became the company's interim CEO, which later became permanent. Jobs subsequently instilled a new corporate philosophy of recognizable products and simple design, starting with the orignal Imac in 1998.

Friday, February 27, 2015

HISTORIC EVENTS PROMPT


I think these two major historical events that impacted the economy are key roles. Both have happened during my lifetime. We see oil prices changing daily and house market crashing. In this post, I write briefly about why I picked these two specific events, and why I believe it impacted the economy.

OIL PRICES: Over the years, oil prices have fluctuated. The last two major oil price declines were driven by central bank policy errors – monetary contractions that led to global economic recessions. During an economic recession, the world economic activity contracts and demand for oil declines. When demand for any commodity contracts, prices decline. The current oil price decline is not accompanied by an economic growth contraction. It’s the first of this type of decline the world has seen in many decades. The current oil price decline isn’t being driven by a decline in demand; instead it’s being driven by an increase in supply.



HOUSE MARKET CRASH: House market crash has been like a roller coaster ride. It has its up and down moments. While stocks typically have a price-to-earnings ratio of 15, they now sit at a ratio closer to 23. At the peak before the crash, the median sale price for a home in the U.S. was $200,000. By the time the market reached bottom, prices had dropped 29%, to $140,000. While today’s national median sale price has rebounded to $185,000, it’s still about 7.5% lower than the pre-crash high.




Saturday, February 21, 2015

Ripples

The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society. That is its task and its promise. To recognize this task and this promise is the mark of the classic social analyst.

Trouble: occurs within the character of the individual and within the range of his immediate relations with others.

Issues:  have to do with matters that transcend these local environments of the individual and the range of his inner life.

Uneasiness: of anxiety which if it is total enough, becomes a deadly unspecified malaise.

Indifference: if it seems to involve all their values, becomes apathy.

Well-being: cherishing some set of values and do not feel any threat to them.

Each keyword gives us one perspective after another from impersonal and remote transformations to the most intimate features of the human self and to see the relations in the Promise.


An industry that I am interested in working in is the field of journalism. Whether it is working as a producer on a TV show, or pitching a news story for coverage. I believe being a journalist is an important role in society. Journalists are the ones who give people what they need to know and hear that is going on locally and internationally. My main interest in being a journalist is to try and enlighten people with Islam and Middle East. These days, Islam is plastered all over our TV media. In many ways, Muslims are portrayed very negatively and violent people of the world. As a Muslim myself, this is very taunting. I want to be able to take things in a different direction. Each keyword applies to why journalism for me is the direction I would like to head too. The uneasiness of what Islam is portrayed. The well-being of the changes I want to make in society and to enlighten those around me.