With Twitter’s high-profile IPO, the media and much of the pundit class are revisiting one of their favorite themes: the superiority of the brash, young urban tech elite, who don’t need to produce much in the way of profits to be showered with investor cash. Libertarians will celebrate the triumph of fast-paced greed and dismiss concerns over equity; progressives may dislike the easy money but will be comforted when much of it ends up supporting their candidates and causes.
Lost amid this discussion is any sense of reality about the economy for the rest of us.
Click the link to see more: Twitter And The Real Economy Of Jobs | Newgeography.comPoints:
- “The focus on digital uber alles is endorsed by a new school of American economics that essentially cedes the future to information-based industries and considers tangible activities like fossil fuel production, manufacturing and construction passé.”
- “There remain economies anchored to more mundane industries, such as energy, construction, manufacturing and logistics, that still offer paths of upward mobility to people who didn’t go to Harvard, MIT or Stanford. These industries also employ more engineers and scientists than the IT sector, and in the case of energy produce more economic benefit to local economies.”
- “…celebrated social media firms, overwhelmingly concentrated close to the venture capital spigot, are both geographically constrained and and employ shockingly few workers.”
- “In term of profits, the supposed holy grail of business, it’s not even close. In Exxon’s disappointing last quarter it racked up $6.9 billion. By contrast Google earned $3.1 billion, while Facebook made $333 million and LinkedIn $3.7 million.”
- “…the strongest household growth is taking place in less glitzy metro areas.”
