Economist, Nov 2, 2013 (I)

choi

(1) Workers’ share of national income | Labour Pains; All around the world, labour is losing out to capital.
http://www.economist.com/news/fi ... apital-labour-pains

Quote:

"The “labour share” of national income has been falling across much of the world since the 1980s (see chart). The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a club of mostly rich countries, reckons that labour captured just 62% of all income in the 2000s, down from over 66% in the early 1990s.

"Workers in America tend to blame cheap labour in poorer places for this trend. They are broadly right to do so, according to new research by Michael Elsby of the University of Edinburgh, Bart Hobijn of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and Aysegul Sahin of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

"Yet trade cannot account for all labour’s woes in America or elsewhere. Workers in many developing countries, from China to Mexico, have also struggled to seize the benefits of growth over the past two decades. The likeliest culprit is technology, which, the OECD estimates, accounts for roughly 80% of the drop in the labour share among its members.

"In recent decades jobs requiring middling skills have declined sharply as a share of total employment, while employment in high- and low-skill occupations has increased. Work by David Autor of MIT, David Dorn of the Centre for Monetary and Financial Studies and Gordon Hanson of the University of California, San Diego, shows that computerisation and automation laid waste mid-level jobs in the 1990s. Trade, by contrast, only became an important cause of the growing disparity in wages in the 2000s.

choi

(3) Air cargo | Cabin Fever; FedEx and UPS have turned Memphis and Louisville into 'aerotropolises.'
http://www.economist.com/news/bu ... polises-cabin-fever

Quote:

"with all the seats and compartments stripped out it [a Boeing 777 jet] is immense—able to carry 225,000 pounds (102 tonnes) of cargo non-stop from [FedEx's US hub: Memphis,] Tennessee to Shanghai. Such passengerless flights make Memphis the world’s second-busiest airport by cargo volume (after Hong Kong).

"Louisville, Kentucky—home to the hub of FedEx’s chief rival, UPS—has a similar story. In 2011 its two airports were responsible, directly or indirectly, for roughly 9% of all jobs in the Louisville area. Cotton built Memphis, and rail and river cargo made Louisville, but those trades dwindled and both cities languished until FedEx and UPS found them.

"Could the idea of a successful aerotropolis be replicated elsewhere? Only in part. Both cities have immense advantages. They are temperate and central. Both have river ports, freight-rail lines and interstate highways to connect the airports to surface transport. Both also have relatively low labour costs, and fairly cheap land.

Note:
(a) "Memphis calls itself America’s 'aerotropolis,' referring to the title of a 2011 book by John Kasarda and Greg Lindsay."
(i) Memphis, Tennessee
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memphis, Tennessee
(south of the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers; had a population of 655,155 in 2012 making it the largest city in the state of Tennessee, the largest city on the Mississippi River; founded in 1819 by John Overton, James Winchester and Andrew Jackson, the future president])

Quote: "Memphis grew into the world's largest spot cotton market and the world's largest hardwood lumber market. Into the 1950s, it was the world's largest mule market.

(ii) Memphis Cotton Exchange
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memphis_Cotton_Exchange
(founded in 1874; "In 1978 the trading floor was closed in favor of computer trading. The historic floor has since then been remodeled and is now home to The Cotton Museum")
(iii) The "cabin fever"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cabin%20fever
(First Known Use 1918)
is nonsense.
(iv) John Kasarda and Greg Lindsay, Aerotropolis; The way we'll live next. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.
(v) The "aerotropolis" is totally made up.

aer- (combining form)
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aer-

metropolis (n; Middle English, from Late Latin, from Greek mētropolis, from mētr-, mētēr mother + polis city — more at MOTHER, POLICE)
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/metropolis

(c) Louisville, Kentucky
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisville,_Kentucky
(the largest city in Kentucky; Located beside the Falls of the Ohio [a series of rapids], the only major obstruction to river traffic between the Ohio River and the Gulf of Mexico, Louisville first grew as portage site; founded in 1778 by George Rogers Clark and is named after King Louis XVI of France)

choi

(2) PSA Peugeot Citroën | Back From the Brink; The fortunes of the beleaguered French carmaker are looking up.
http://www.economist.com/news/bu ... oking-up-back-brink
  
Quote:

"Though sad for those who work there, the closure [of PSA's Aulnay-sous-Boisis assembly plant] is good news for European carmakers struggling with overcapacity, above all for the second-largest.

PSA "lacks scale. PSA makes around a third as many cars as Volkswagen (VW), for example. Its biggest platform turned out 1.2m vehicles in 2012 to VW’s 3.5m, says IHS Automotive, a market-research outfit.

"Peugeot is widely accused of missing two boats: China, and finding a full-scale international partner. * * * PSA’s sights are in any event increasingly trained on Asia and its joint ventures with two state-backed Chinese manufacturers. With Dongfeng it is turning out over 400,000 cars a year; PSA’s sales in China have grown faster than the market, albeit from a low base. Its newer joint venture with Chang’an is producing the more luxurious Citroën DS line at a factory opened in September.

Note:
(a) PSA Peugeot Citroën
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSA_Peugeot_Citro%C3%ABn  
(officially Peugeot SA [short for Société Anonyme], informally PSA; Headquartered in Paris, PSA is the second-largest Europe-based automaker)
(i) SA (corporation)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.A._(corporation)
(ii) French-English dictionary:
* société (noun feminine): "society; company"
* anonyme (adjective masculine and feminine; plural anonymes;  Ancient Greek anōnumos, “without name”, from an, “without” + onuma): "anonymous"

* sous (preposition; from Latin subtus, which is derived from Latin sub): "under"
* bois (noun masculine): "wood (material); woods/woodland"

(iii) The meaning of French surname Peugeot is unknown.
(iv) Regarding Citroën.
(A) André Citroën
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Citro%C3%ABn
(1878-1935; child of Jewish parents, diamond merchant Levie Citroen from the Netherlands)  

Quote: "The Citroen family moved to Paris from Amsterdam in 1873. Upon arrival, the diaeresis was added to the name (reputedly by one of André's teachers), changing Citroen to Citroën (a grandfather had been a greengrocer and seller of tropical fruit, and had taken the surname of Limoenman, literally 'lime man,' his son however preferred Citroen, Dutch for 'lemon').

(B) French alphabet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_alphabet
("Diaeresis or tréma (ë, ï, ü, ÿ): Over e, i, u or y, Indicates that a vowel is to be pronounced separately from the preceding one: naïve, Noël")

(b) Aulnay-sous-Bois
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aulnay-sous-Bois
(section 1 Toponym)
(c) Peugeot is now out of the hospital and on the job.

on the job: "actively engaged in one's employment"
http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/on-the-job

* The adjective "on-the-job" (as in "on-the-job training") is similar.