Recovering labor leader, tech founder/CEO, Asst US SecLabor, McKinsey. Unions, technology, tool watches, bikes, politics, and other high arts.
Dec 12, 2019 • 17 tweets • 6 min read
Thread on the decline of the labor share.
The American economy seems to divert a smaller fraction of its overall income to paychecks than it once did, although both the math and the meaning of this change is fraught.
1/16
For generations, the labor share was a mysterious and totemic constant, like the speed of light for a physicist.
About 2/3 of national income always went to wages. Nobody knew why. John Maynard Keynes declared the constant “a bit of a miracle.”
2/16
Dec 4, 2019 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
In June, another controversy over McKinsey's role helping Jacob Zuma, the disgraced President of South Africa, loot the federal treasury.
The Times called it "the biggest mistake in McKinsey’s nine-decade history."
If only.
12/18
nytimes.com/2018/06/26/wor…
The same month, the Times reported on state lawsuits claiming that McKinsey advised Purdue Pharma to “get more patients on higher doses of opioids” and study techniques “for keeping patients on opioids longer.”
I joined the San Francisco office of @McKinsey in 1987. Like members of the CIA and the Royal Household, we called it The Firm.
The Firm values deep professionalism as much as analytic and strategic chops. Values, not formal structures, hold it together.
1/18
These values required strict integrity. Clients interests come first. We fired dishonest or sketchy clients.
Once a teammate claimed to have made a phone call that he had not yet made. The lie was trivial, but the Firm fired him that day. Nobody violated Firm Values.
