Author Archives: jgoldstein

Posts: 108 (archived below)
Comments: 15

“The engine of unbridled capitalism, with its unfair system of thought, has reached the end of the road and is unable to move.”

Ahmadinejad would probably like this blog.  Here’s the article link:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/23/general.assembly.ahmadinejad/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

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Fashion has no mercy

Free Speech: Hadley Freeman Ponders The Fashionable Fallout Of A Faltering Economy

http://www.style.com/stylefile/2008/10/free-speech-hadley-freeman-ponders-the-fashionable-fallout-of-a-faltering-economy/

Contradicting to my other post about financialization of fashion, in this article it almost seems as if it doesn’t care if the economy has any impact on it at all. They feel like fashion still continues, still has the need to provide to people on how they should look. 

“because they know that the real money is with people who won’t be affected by this financial downturn at all. Fashion houses will be aiming for the new markets—Russia, China, India, the Middle East, and South America—and the enormous wealth therein.”

What the hell is this? That REAL money is with the people who won’t be affect by this crisis. In other words, they only want to target the rich because ultimately they are the only ones who will be spending in this crisis. This makes me angry in a sense that they are only targeting a specific class and this is why everything is financialize about fashion. I mean you make things people can’t afford and want, making all these commodities and you have young people who are determine to get it because they feel that it defines them. Then you have credit cards available to people who can’t pay for it but have access and just buy without thinking. This whole mess just going around and around in circles. Fashion has no mercy, they can care less about the crisis except the sales they need to make and how they are going to finanicialize their ideas only to a selective few.

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What’s the next step for fashion?

Fashion industry hit by hard financial times

http://www.3news.co.nz/News/NationalNews/Fashion-industry-hit-by-hard-financial-times/tabid/423/articleID/104380/cat/64/Default.aspx

In this articles it basically just talks about how the crisis harmed the fashion industry.  I find it ineresting that they are talking on new ideas on how to make their sales. I did my research paper on fashion and financialization of fashion.  WIth this point proven, there are alternative ways they were looking to financialize it. 

“”The middle, mainstream customer who shopped with us every week or every month are not buying as much or they’re going elsewhere,” she says. “They’re doing other things with their disposable income.”

As you can see most middle class are started to be pushed down, yea of course the rich will still be rich and buy the expensive clothes. But what happens to the middle and low class people, they will find their way as well. What stucks me the most in this article is one of the lady see a gap in the fashion industry and decided to open up and sewing and mending store. What is the next step for fashion, would people start to realize that they don’t need as much clothes as they use it and that these vintage or thift shop might actually get more recongnize. The idea of opening up a sewing and mending service brings me to think about what people might start doing now that times are high. Will we start to recycle more and less waste, maybe the time consumption of an item will be recongize for it’s value, as in maybe we will learn not to waste food or use styrafoam, but now we need to start conserving. It’s a possiblity that what we talked about in the beginning of the clasa about waste, might take in effect where shoes should be worn for 1 year rather than 3 months. Maybe, we shall see..

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JP Morgan Says Losses on WaMu Credit Cards Could Reach 24%

I smell a “ahh I knew this was going to happen moment”. Almost like a kick in the face.  This article basically talks about the credit card loans that many banks are failing to collect. Hmm, I woornder why. This is to say and show how serious credit cad debt is. I mean banks offer all these special promotions to lure us into having a credit card, and feeding us to use it, but at the same time, knowing many people can’t afford to pay for what they actually spend. End result? A crash and a high percent of unable to collect.   

“At the end of the first quarter, 12.63 per cent of the WaMu credit card loans were deemed uncollectable by JPMorgan”.

My research paper was about finanicilization fashion along with credit card debt. This clearly shows that this hole capitalism created is actually suffering their own consequence. I mean I know it’s bad on a macro level, because this means as  country we are more in debt. But thinking of it in micro level, people should realize what they can spend and what they can’t afford. The piece of plastic doesn’t mean anything if you can’t pay for the bills.

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Standards of Fashion

It seems as if everyone wants something different.  The more unique the clothing is, the more fashionable and expensive it will be.  The article “Fashion lives outside malls” by Anna Barbara Lorenzo, does a good job at describing how the mass production hurts fashion marketability.  She stated:

“Mass production maybe good for certain businesses, but it is a nightmare for fashion-conscious people who want not just to be trendy but to be different as well.”

In the fashion world I agree that consumers want not only to be fashionable, but they want to be set apart from everyone else and feel “exclusive”.  If everyone can have your oufit, suddenly you don’t want it anymore because its not special. However, the specialness is something you must pay for.  Often, the mass produced department store clothing is much cheaper because it is produced for a very cheap price by underpaid workers.

Lorenzo described a store called the I Love You store where everything is unique and made with a personal touch. It is owned by three women  Corinne Ching, Sharon Atillo and Mimi Sanson. I think consumers feel better about an item when it is made under fair labor practices and is unique but I’m not sure whether there is a way to make these couture items a reasonable price.

“There is emphasis on each piece being an artwork. The clothes are their canvas. We give them complete freedom to express themselves,” Ms. Ching said in a recent interview.”

Fashion is art and I think people should be creative with their style but when its mass produced you just dont feel the same. consumers don’t feel that they are going above the normal standards.  Fashion consumers want the best and the best is more expensive. The article said that the clothing prices range from 300 dollars to 3000 dollars and shoes from 800 dollars to 1200 dollars. Rocker tee shirts are from 400 to 1200 dollars.  Thats right, tee shirts. One of the store owners stated,

“I have to feel that what they (designers) bring is different and not like the stuff one can just get in a mall. The styles here are diverse. We have clothes for yuppies and rockers alike,”.

These clothes in the boutique are not meant for everyone and they are stating that it isn’t meant for the low or middle class, its meant for yuppies because thats who can afford it.  Not many can afford to drop 1200 dollars on a tee shirt and still have enough money to live comfortably that month.  So what is everyone else doing? shopping at department stores for clothing that is mass produced.

To get a bit of history backround about the standardization of clothes i visited the site http://museum.nist.gov/exhibits/apparel/history.htm. It explained how clothing was not always mass produced before the civil war.  For the war they produced uniforms in mass quantities.  From then on mass production increased.  However womens clothing was still custom made until the 1920s.  Then advertising increased and demand increased so clothing started to be mass produced and that led us to where we are today.  Please check this interesting website out it is a virtual museum of the history of fashion.

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steal this university

these are the quotes I got from the first two chapters of steal this university, which helped me write my paper.

 

“in the past twenty years, more than 500 new for-profit colleges and universities have opened their doors- at the four year level, for-profits have increased their number from 18 to 192. “- p15

-this is a prime example of where the pressure on universities to move towards a profit motive is coming from. they have to compete with all these online universities that use different methods to issue degrees that aren’t necessarily what the real universities would have.

 

“shift the meaning of college from that of a process one goes through to a product one buys.: p 16

-this is the commodification of higher education, making it move from an experience that enriches a person to something the person owns and uses

 

“the board of higher ed. in mass. suggested to eliminate, or provide a compelling reason for retaining academic programs that have fewer than a minimum threshold of graduates per year for a period of three years.”p 21

– this is very business like, not very academic to eliminate programs because there are not enough students graduating from them. they would not have been worried about this before efficiency was necessary to compete as a more business like model.

 

“all campuses have developed alliances with local and regional business and industry to provide employee training and development opportunities as well as research support.” massachusetts p 21

-shows how the cooperations are moving into academia and using their labor for themselves.

“Mc Education” p23

higher exploitation –marc bousquet

doing the work of staff, the work of faculty, grading, tutoring and even serving as research assistants just like grad students

– the unpaid labor provided to the cooperations

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Suprstar Economics #2

           I reviewed the article, “Superstars without talent? The Yule distribution controversy”, by Laura Spierdijk and Mark Voorneveld. The article is quite interesting, as it focuses on the world wide phenomenon of novice artists that start their career with little or no talent and end up with all the benefits of being a superstar. The following example roughly illustrates why this may happen. Music has an important social aspect and people tend to follow the crowd, thus creating the snowball effect. This is one explanation, but there are many more that go more in depth.  

           

 

           I also want to touch on my favorite topic of the economics of the superstar, which the commoditization of the superstar. It is the idea that the artist itself is made into a product. This product, just like any other product, can be advertised on television, shown on billboards in Times Square, mentioned on the radio, etc. the image now can be used to promote literally any other brand such as clothing or a beverage. The artist is already well known for their own individual fame and so is now ready to be marketed. When this happens, companies need to take advantage of it and use the artist to promote their own product- “product for product advertising”. And so we cannot blame the company or the artist because both parties are benefiting a great deal. People will be more likely to warm up to the product if they see it being utilized by someone famous to them. They rarely stop and think about how primitive this way of marketing really is. That it takes advantage of the consumer into utilizing the product just because another human being is using it.

 

        http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:nYC5SNJXnIUJ:swopec.hhs.se/hastef/papers/hastef0658.pdf+economics+of+the+superstar&cd=29&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

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Financialization of the NBA…part 2

Jeff Schmidt writes in Disciplined Minds that industry looks for “an obedient thinker, an intellectual property whom employers can trust to experiment, theorize, innovate and create safely within the confines of an assigned ideology” (Schmidt), so to, the NBA does the same with its players. Have you ever heard a player speak out on the lackluster cleanup after Hurricane Katrina? What about the sub-prime loans given to many low income minority families that have them losing homes at a rapid pace? The answer is a resounding no, because the league as a brand does not want its name associated with political views or “radical” perspectives, instead it wants “obedient” players. The classic example of this is Craig Hodges, one of the best pure shooters in NBA history, who after winning the NBA Championship with the Chicago Bulls donned a “dashiki and delivered a hand-written letter addressed to then President George H. W. Bush, expressing his discontent at the administration’s treatment of poor and minorities” (Wikipedia). After this act of individualism, not only was he not signed by the Bulls the following season, but he was not even offered a tryout by any other team in the league…ever again. Many think he was blackballed by the league because of his strong opinions, and he even filed a lawsuit against the NBA to that degree. This is still a confusing act by a league that should be more concerned with good officiating than the opinions of its players. However, when realizing how financialized the NBA is, the picture becomes more clear.

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Superstar economics #1

           Sherwin Rosen’s, “the economics of superstars”, is a very interesting article. This is a topic which I wanted to research and write on for quite some time. To start off, all artists these days are signed for profit gain. The way that playing the stock market is a gamble, the same is with artists. When buying a stock, you are hoping that it will bring profit in the future. When signing an artist to become a recording artist, you are betting that they will become a cash cow in the near future. Now, although it has technically always been like this, this sole profit seeking has been on a considerably lower level in the past. In the past centuries, there has been a larger emphasis on pure talent and the service of entertainment, without the tremendous burden of it being obligated to make money. In this day in age, the pursuit to make profit is all that we care about it, as it seems. Now, this is from the institution point of view, such as a recoding company. But what about the artists themselves, who after a while in the spotlight (which doesn’t even have to be a long time), can work their image into a multi million dollar machine.

 

http://www.geocities.com/valencia_aaup/The_Economics_of_Superstars.html

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The Oligarchy

          I read an excerpt from Simon Johnson’s article, “U.S. Oligarchs and their Minions”. The article basically states that one possible outcome that can occur if, this financial crises prolongs in a certain way, is the reign of an Oligarchy. Now, the definition of an Oligarchy is a form of government where power effectively rests with a small elite segment of society distinguished by royal, wealth, family, military or religious hegemony. Of course if this transition happens, it will not be so evident, as in the public will not be able to tell much difference from the way it was before. It will only be evident to those in position of power. The article also touches on the controversial issue of whether the United States is an Oligarchy already, which many believe this to be true.

          If this is true, that the United States is in fact an Oligarchy, it means that the country is ultimately controlled by a small elite at the very top. Which means that “democratic machines”, such as a presidential election, is nothing more than an illusion made for the public to practice their democratic rule. Where in fact, the outcome of the election is already known long before and is just used to preserve image and control. In my opinion, I do believe the America is an Oligarchy that is controlled by the power of the elite and has been for a very long time, if not since the birth of the country.

 

http://forestpolicy.typepad.com/economics/2009/03/us-oligarchs-and-their-minions.html

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