Goldman Sachs CEO: “Tensions Between Capital And Labor” Are “Fueling Anxiety”

[okaawhatever]

Source: BuzzFeed

Speaking on the 63rd floor of One World Trade Center to an audience of bankers, reporters and executives, the CEO of Goldman Sachs fretted over the fate of labor in the modern economy.

When asked about how corporations allocate their capital — increasingly buying back stock from their shareholders — Lloyd Blankfein said “the capital we’re spending is augmenting capital” that could be invested elsewhere, such as in hiring or expansion.

Andrew Ross Sorkin, who was interviewing him for the New York Times’s DealBook Conference, then asked about Uber, which recently raised over $1 billion at a valuation of over $40 billion — with Goldman also raising money for Uber from its wealth management clients. Blankfein said the “sharing economy” can create more efficiency, which “can sometimes be the enemy of maximizing the labor force,” and that the gains from that efficiency go to investors like venture capital firms that have large stakes in Uber.

“The efficiencies are coming at the expense of labor,” Blankfein said. “That’s creating all sorts of problems for the country.”

Continued at Link:

Read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/matthewzeitlin/goldman-sachs-labor

[Scuba]

1. God forbid the banksters should have to suffer "anxiety". That's just for us proles ...

... who aren't sure we'll have jobs tomorrow.

[L0oniX]

13. That "anxiety" is a greed addiction symptom over where they are going to get their next money fix.

[Turbineguy]

2. Wrong

Tensions between Labor and the parasites that stand between capital and labor are fueling anxiety.

[Wellstone ruled]

3. Today seems to be the day of truth,

The head Parasite of the 1% ers speaks and the the real story starts to emerge. Blankfine Model,rob for the Working Class via Stock Buy Backs so the Wealthy can continue their status while the worker class claws for crumbs. It's called Supply Side Economics Lloyd,and you admit there is a Capital shift away from plant expansion and hiring to the supper Wealthy. Got to love it when the true nature of a man comes from their mouths.

[DeSwiss]

4. Anxious?

- Usually the simplest advice is the best way to proceed.......

K&R

[Dustlawyer]

5. True lip service! I am sure that during the meal they were saying, "Let them eat cake!"

[hatrack]

6. Little Lord Blankcheck apparently looked out the window and noticed unrest in his kingdom

Too little, way too late you self-important fuckstick.

[Hubert Flottz]

20. He's getting all twitchy...

ROTFLMAO! He can smell the tar and feathers.

[titaniumsalute]

7. At some point the SMART Super Wealthy will really start getting worried

Look...these people mostly couldn't give two shits about the actual working class. But they do give two shits about their wallets. And frankly the smarter ones who are looking long-term and strategic have to see the writing on the wall. If the labor class middle class don't have extra income to spend money beyond basic needs, then it will impact the wealthy class.

Now the impact isn't that they won't be able to go buy a new jet or 10,000 square foot ocean view house...but their companies will start to lose since people can't buy whatever they are selling. The rich CEOs, even if their hearts are in the wrong place, should start at least getting smart enough to say "Hey let's take a little profit hit now buy increasing our worker pay/benefits in order to help solidify our own long-term growth goals." Shoot if 100 of the top companies started paying more the trickle down impact would be the rest of the companies would also. If not the good talent pool would start all knocking down the doors of the bigger companies.

[L0oniX]

12. They will only worry if they are not making enough money to keep withdrawal symptoms away.

[appalachiablue]

21. According to a new report this week from ILO, the Swiss based International Labor Organization

wages have risen in developing countries like China, India and Brazil at a rate of 5-6% over the last decade, while the old, first world, once highly developed capitalist countries- the US, in Europe and Japan have only seen a wage increase of 1-2%. These once powerful industrial economies are stagnating or declining.

This week Prof. Richard Wolff, economist, New School, Boston Univ. spoke about this labor news report attributing changes to the wealthy west's sending jobs overseas where labor is cheaper and for increased profits. The way to prevent more US corporations leaving he says, is to enact laws barring this unacceptable socially destructive behavior. It's ruined economies in abandoned communities like Cleveland, Camden, Detroit and thousands of other US cities. He has also advocated building up worker cooperatives in the US especially since the Burndown of 2008.

Through legislation the problem of flight and blight can be ended he thinks, similar to how businesses in earlier times were made to stop (profitable) child labor and sexual predation of employees in the US and they still survived. He explains this in several media appearances this week, on the Thom Hartman Program and RT (Russia Today) News which can be found online, or on YouTube. The big problem obvious to me is what incentive do corps have to stop the bleeding, and the fact that they, the 1% totally own the US government and the majority of politicians anymore with little opposition or leverage from the Democratic Party.

Very recent advances in computer technology-AUTOMATION- are starting to impact jobs in both lower and middle class occupations in many fields already, improvements in robotic software, AI (artificial intelligence), 3D Printing and Self-driving vehicles. Some call this 'irreversible technological unemployment'. See Oxford Martin School report, 2013, and MIT Review, 'Computer advances likely to eliminate 47% of US jobs over the next 20 years'. Also see *CGI Grey, 2014 Video online, *"Humans Need Not Apply"- grim, techno-libertarian view of rapid automation but worth watching.

This new automation is concerning to me (but not others), and why brightest minds at Oxford and elsewhere have been studying the future of human labor and other global issues like climate change, major disruption of states and economies and existential threats to humans and the earth. Several significant academic articles have appeared in the last year and a half about the future of human labor? and calling for a guaranteed minimum income which has been discussed before and exists in some Europe and other countries.

The outsourcing trend of the last 20+ years fueling growth in developing countries has created a new, very large MIDDLE CLASS in China and India and other places who want and are able to purchase western lifestyle goods and services- TVs, computers, cars, a/c, travel, consumer goods and services through their rapidly modernized infrastructure in their vast new cities.
A Forbes article I read recently online by a young Asian writer from 2011 explained that China now has a huge MIDDLE CLASS of 800 Million people, comparable in wealth to the west. (The US total population is 320 Million people). This Middle Class of China will rise to over 1.2 billion in 15 years from 2011 according to her. That is where transnationals are selling their stuff. THIS IS WHERE THE GROWTH IS AND THE FUTURE IS FOR CORPS. Seems clear to me.

US businesses as minor as Yum Foods- Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC are already a part of China, and hotels, banks and other corps have been global for some time-esp. with the advent of improved transportation and communications technologies-airplane travel, internet, webcam conferencing and cellphones in the last 20-30 years. India and the Philippines with their fairly large English speaking populations are where many US and transnational corps and banks have already sent and set up their 'back office operations departments' because of cheaper costs. (When I call my newer health ins. co. to make a payment I reach a phone worker in the Philippines).

I think the remaining 1%er elite class in the US will still consume luxury class items, and for the increasing lower class there's Walmart, fast food and dollar stores. I've seen the upper ruling class and vast underclass in S. America years ago. Sorry to bring all this up, and that it doesn't seem a better picture from what I've read. But a lot of this is what I've seen in global finance news, less in US MSM. For US survival possibility I like the healthier, safer suggestion to increase worker COOPeratives in the US, but frankly wonder why this hasn't happened on a larger scale since the writing's been on the wall for some time.

[turbinetree]

8. No dirtbag

It your greed, your failure to do business in a honest and forthright way.
Your greed and attacking the Dodd-Frank and the new CPFB to protect the worker and families from your greed there pension funds and other assets.
Your greed in getting tax payers dollars at the tune of .01 % from the treasury of the country , while you were bankrupting the country on the mortgage crises, and derivative black pools you support and created and then charging the consumer 2.74 % and higher on interest fees, in loans and credit cards.
And your complicity and absolute credit debacle in mortgage loans in this country.
No dirt bag it's you and your ilk which have bought and sold your oligarpghy to a Congress that cause more economic unfairness .
Your outright absolute support to ship jobs over seas to "produce" more products and to have trade deals further erode the country into a fourth rate state all in the name of greed
And your absolute disdain in the American worker and there labor to make this country what it once was and is now becoming.
And your whining that you cannot squeeze more blood out of a proverbial turnip called labor, to buy stock back at profit.
And a $550 million dollar hypocrite worth living wherever you live
Sorry Buck, your whining doesn't wash

[HoosierCowboy]

9. A Better Insight into the World we're heading towards

A supply driven economy that works efficiently trying to supply a population that has no money. Jobs completely eliminated by automation making all kinds of stuff that no one can afford. It's a blind alley for both labor and management.

[samsingh]

10. good observation - guess that's why he gets paid the big bucks

[L0oniX]

11. Oh bullshit! They know they own the US government.

[McCamy Taylor]

14. If I talk about capital and labor, I'm a commie. So how come Goldman Sachs gets to talk about it?

[progressoid]

15. Hey, put your money where your mouth is Lloyd.

You say you're a "Democrat".

[Burf-_-]

16. Abraham Lincoln

"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."

Abraham Lincoln

[DemandsRedPill]

17. awake to a new paradigm

There's another post here where a black man laments and tears up over his lot in life

That being a homeless man

Nothing really new there I guess

The guy seemed like someone we could welcome into our proposed worker co-op / intentional community/off the grid living project

Another poster said his problem was lack of land and that he was poor

We need to redefine poor and consider that land is not infinite
Planets do not expand to meet our needs

This man and perhaps millions of others in similar situations have to come to grips with the fact that we are heading toward a new paradigm


New one whether any of us likes it or not

We went from feudalism to capitalism to hyper capitalism.
Hyper capitalism must and will result in a return in many ways to pre capitalism days or neo feudalism

But that's only if we fail to move forward to the next inevitable phase and that is worker co-ops and a more collective lifestyle built on simple living and sustainability

All the magic thinking on the left and all the head in the sand narcissism on the right will not save us

Only makes things worse

Let's get to a steady state economy not based on growth till we expire (remember just like cancer we are consuming our host and will at some point in the not so distant future kill the host and us along with it.

Food for thought

[appalachiablue]

18. People like Lloyd Blankfein, Eric Schmidt of Googe and Ben Carson benefited from the

Last edited Fri Dec 12, 2014, 12:29 AM - Edit history (1)

strong economy, social stability, government programs, well paying union jobs with benefits and pensions, and affordable housing and college during the administrations of FDR, JFK, Johnson and beyond. All were born in the 1950s and grew up in the most prosperous era in US history with the largest, greatest middle class the world has ever known.

Each attended taxpayer supported public schools in NY, Washington DC and Detroit with strong curricula and professional, unionized teachers. Blankfein's father was a federal government clerk at the US Post Office, Schmidt's father was employed by the federal government at the US Treasury Department, then publically funded universities. Carson's family received government support, he benefited from affirmative action.

Every one was able to complete higher education at the world's leading colleges and universities in the US, without going into debt. Because of opportunity provided by this country each reached the highest level in their fields for which they receive extraordinary monetary compensation.

If they had grown up in Italy, Argentina or India they might be shop owners. Their business practices and political views summon just what exactly is their gratitude and responsibility to this great nation.

[Odin2005]

19. "No shit, Sherlock" -Karl Marx