How to Create Jobs

In the New York Times, Paul Krugman says the administration needs to do more to promote job growth. “It’s time for an emergency jobs program. How is a jobs program different from a second stimulus? It’s a matter of priorities. The 2009 Obama stimulus bill was focused on restoring economic growth. It was, in effect, based on the belief that if you build G.D.P., the jobs will come. That strategy might have worked if the stimulus had been big enough — but it wasn’t. And as a matter of political reality, it’s hard to see how the administration could pass a second stimulus big enough to make up for the original shortfall.”

Separately, Gary Becker and Richard Posner debate what to do about unemployment. Becker: “It is wiser to cut labor costs in other ways. I fully endorse Posner’s suggestions to cut the minimum wage, but I do not see that happening with the present Congress. My favorite approach it to try to stimulate the economy by cutting income taxes, especially corporate income taxes and other taxes on capital, both physical and human capital. Such tax cuts will stimulate investments in the economy, and in this way increase the demand for workers.”

Personally, I prefer Becker's approach. That policy option has worked best in the green industry historically.

Not so normal "new normal"

Interesting commentary from Grant McCracken from his article entitled "Why Zmerican Consumers Will Spend Lavishly Again"
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The "new normal" — the idea that when income, credit and confidence return, Americans will not return to our free-spending ways — is an idea on the march, recruiting everyone from PIMCO CEO Mohamed El-Erian to Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duke. It's spreading so fast it threatens to become the new orthodoxy.

I believe the argument is flawed. When Mike Duke says, "[P]eople are saving more, consuming less, and being more frugal and thoughtful in their purchases," he is right in the short term, but wrong in the long term. When income, credit, and confidence return, consumers will party like its 1999.

We've never had a good explanation for why consumers consume. So when they stop consuming, it's easy to think they will never start again. If pressed, we say consumption is about vanity, status, greed, cheap money and the consumers' own brand of irrational exuberance. Even in good times, we keep expecting consumers to come to their senses. In tough times, we think, but of course they will. A new normal is inevitable.

But it's wrong. As a classically trained anthropologist, I have spent many years doing ethnographic research in American homes. This represents hundreds and hundreds of hours of careful listening, two hours at a time. I know the American consumer as few do.

Let me introduce you to Susan Householder.* Here she is, standing in the entrance of her garage in a middle class suburb of Ridgefield, New York. She is surveying a mountain of stuff: bicycles, toboggans, a work bench, exercise equipment, canned goods, Christmas decorations, a picnic hamper, board games, lots of wrapping paper, several boxes of stem ware, and lots and lots of containers, contents unknown. There's so much stuff here, this ceased to be a garage a long time ago. It's now a storage locker, Susan's very own U-Store-It. (Cars are consigned to the drive way.) If we wanted a monument to all the spending Susan did in the 00s, this is it.

What created this mountain of stuff? Was it irrational exuberance and cheap money? It was not. This crowded garage springs from cultural motives. These things were not purchased to express vanity or pursue status. They were purchased to help Susan build a life.

Susan's been listening to Martha Stewart, so she now celebrates Christmas, Thanksgiving and birthdays with more formality, and yes, more stuff. Like everyone, she is cultivating new ideas of childhood for her kids and this requires another great wave of stuff. In the 18th century, the average American child had a wooden toy and an iron hoop. Susan's kids need many more things, including soccer boots, Karate outfits, paint kits, building blocks, skateboards, Xboxes, iPods, cell phones, and a ton of games and books.

Susan's biggest recent expenditure is the "great room" she and her husband installed a couple of years ago. Like millions of other Americans, Susan created one large, sumptuous room by combining her living room, dining room, and kitchen. It cost $45,000, a princely sum for this household, but it caused Susan not a flicker of remorse. After all, she has a new idea of entertainment. Susan had tired of being a "servant in my own home." When entertaining friends, she was forced to ferry food to and from the dining room, missing half the conversation, working as her own household staff. Now her guests sit at around the island in the great room, glass of wine in hand, looking on while Susan cooks brilliantly beneath halogen lighting. From 2005 to 2007, expenditures on interior renovation in American homes rose about 40 percent to $13 billion. Much of this was driven by Martha and the great room.

We could say this is irrational consumption, but actually it has a deeper, culture motive. Susan is fashioning her social life. To be sure, there is status seeking here. But there is also something richer and more cultural, as Susan works out new ideas of the "host," "guest" and "entertainment."

Susan has her eye on a purse by the designer Kate Spade. It's called the Cornelia Street Noel Blair and it costs $425. Susan has many purses, around 20 of them. So she doesn't need this bag...at all. This must be all about vanity, status and greed.

Not really. Susan loves this bag because it captures a concept of the person she thinks she might be becoming. Kate Spade has a positive genius for plucking new signals out of the noise of culture and turning them into something a woman can own, wear, and become. This is a luxury purchase in so far as it costs vastly more than a container needs to. But what makes it valuable for Susan is that it contains the idea of who she wants to be.

Right now Susan is hunkered down. She and her husband have scaled back expenditure. But this much is clear: The cultural motives of Susan's consumption have not changed. When circumstances allow, she will return to spending enthusiastically to fashion her children, her family, and herself. The "new normalists" missed one thing. Susan has real and substantial motives for spending. When income, credit, and confidence return, she's going to start spending again.

*Susan is a compilation of several consumers I have interviewed.

Click here for original post.

Grant McCracken holds a PhD from the University of Chicago in cultural anthropology. He is the author of Culture and Consumption, Culture and Consumption II, Plenitude, The Long Interview, Flock and Flow, and Transformation. He has been the director of the Institute of Contemporary Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum, a senior lecturer at the Harvard Business School, and a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge, and he is now a research affiliate at C3 at MIT. He has consulted widely in the corporate world, including the Coca-Cola Company, Diageo, IBM, IKEA, Chrysler, Kraft, and Kimberly Clark. He has served on marketing advisory boards for IBM and the Boston Beer Company. Basic Books will publish his new book, Chief Culture Officer, on December 1 this year.

MarketWatch for the Week Ahead

Floral Industry Ready to Move Forward with Standard Data Protocols

Electronic ordering, receiving and invoicing using product distribution and tracking technologies that transformed the consumer products delivery system are about to become a reality in the floral industry.

Standard data protocols, including the Global Trade Item Number (GTIN, pronounced “gee-tin”) for boxes and the Universal Product Code (UPC) for bunches and bouquets, are now available.

The Floral Logistics Coalition, a consortium of six industry trade associations including SAF, says automation will help trading partners meet market demand and stay competitive.

Used for some time in other industries, the GTIN and UPC are part of an internationally recognized data standard behind bar-coding systems enabling supply chain partners to eliminate redundancies, reduce manual labor and minimize the chance for human error in the distribution process. Their implementation can help cut cost and error out of the floral supply chain, speed delivery and, ultimately, make a fresher and more consistent range of product available to the consumer.

“The entire floral industry needs to get on board with this quickly,” said Jim Wanko, executive vice president of the Wholesale Florist & Florist Supplier Association. “It can directly impact our ability to compete with other consumer goods.” Suppliers and wholesalers unable to conduct business electronically may soon find it difficult to do business with mass merchandisers, supermarkets and possibly some larger retail florists, Wanko said.

The Floral Logistics Coalition has been working for more than two years to define, test and refine the coding strategy so that the industry can move forward on the Floral GTIN Initiative. Best practices for box labeling, UPC item labeling and synchronizing data are being worked on by industry-wide committees.

The Coalition has created a website — www.floralgtin.com — as an online resource for growers, importers, distributors and their trading partners. On it are step-by-step implementation instructions, the full GTIN Implementation Guide, and a timeline designed to have the system operating by the middle of next year.

The Floral Logistics Coalition is made up of six industry trade organizations including the Produce Marketing Association (PMA), Wholesale Florist and Florist Supplier Association (WFFSA), Association of Floral Importers of Florida (AFIF), California Association of Flower Growers and Shippers (CAFGS), California Cut Flower Commission (CCFC), and the Society of American Florists (SAF). Also involved is GS1 US, the organization which oversees the international supply chain standard in the United States.

Industry members with questions about the GTIN Initiative should visit www.floralgtin.com or contact their respective organizations.

— Shelley Estersohn sestersohn@safnow.org

Spring Pack Trials Excursion for Greenhouse Growers

A bus trip for greenhouse growers is being planned to next year’s California Spring Pack Trials from April 9 -13, 2010. Dr. Mark Bridgen of Cornell University, along with Dr. Brian Krug of the University of New Hampshire, Dr. Roberto Lopez of Purdue University, and Dr. Neil Mattson of Cornell University, have organized an intense, educational trip to several of the key Spring Trial locations. The trip is designed specifically for greenhouse growers and other horticulture professionals.

The trip itinerary is jam-packed; the days begin early and continue at a fast pace late into the evening. Attendees should plan to arrive on Friday, April 9 and will stay at a designated hotel near the San Jose Airport. The journey begins at 7 a.m. on Saturday, April 10, when the bus departs from the hotel. That first day, the group will visit Golden State Bulb Growers in Watsonville, Syngenta Flowers/Goldsmith Seeds in Gilroy, Speedling (along with exhibitors Thompson & Morgan, GreenNex USA, Hem Genetics, MasterTag, Plant Source International, and Schoneveld Twello) in San Juan Batista, and Sakata Seed in Salinas. Participants will stay in Salinas on Saturday night.

On Sunday, April 11, the day will begin with a 2 hour bus drive to San Luis Obispo, where the first stop will be Dummen USA. After a short drive to Arroyo Grande, the group will visit Greenheart Farms. The last stop of the day will be in Santa Barbara where the participants will visit Jiffy along with their exhibitors Northern Innovators, Skagit Gardens, and Florist de Kwakel.

Monday, April 12, will be a busy day beginning with the bus departing at 7 a.m. and driving for an hour to PlantHaven. Following this stop, the group will arrive at Ball Horticultural Co. in Santa Paula where displays of PanAmerican, Ball FloraPlant, Kieft Seeds, and Selecta varieties will be featured. Lunch will be hosted by Ball. In the afternoon, Green Fuse Botanicals in Oxnard will be visited along with GroLink. If time allows, the last stop of the day will be in Somis, CA to visit Suntory.

Participants will spend Monday night at a hotel in West Hollywood, CA. This hotel is conveniently located midway between the Los Angeles (LAX) airport and the Burbank Airport. There is a shuttle service and taxi service to both of these airports from the hotel.

This package trip includes the cost of first class hotel accommodations for four nights from April 9-12, bus transportation from San Jose on the first day to West Hollywood on the last day, lunches for 3 days, and experienced guides. Participants need to arrange their own transportation into San Jose on April 9 and out of West Hollywood on April 12, and cover their own dinner costs. A travel agency is available to assist with these reservations (go to the website listed below). The cost of the trip will be $450 per person in a double room or $720 per person for a single room. These rates are based on 47 participants and will be adjusted slightly if minimum capacity is not met. The trip is subject to change and may be canceled if minimum capacity is not met.

**Space is limited** Register by January 29, 2010 to reserve a seat on this trip. For on-line reservation, go to www.concepts.us.com and click on Event Registration at the bottom left of the site. Be sure to go to the site labeled: Greenhouse Growers Spring Trials 2010. If you have questions, contact Dr. Mark Bridgen at mpb27@cornell.edu or at 631-727-3595.

This group trip to the 2010 California Spring Pack Trials is a new, one-of-a-kind venture for growers! All greenhouse growers and floriculture professionals are invited to attend. It is an opportunity to meet fellow growers, breeders, and other plant company representatives to share ideas, update your understanding of what's happening in our industry, and travel with trained professionals.

Getting better SLOWLY

The latest from Bill Conerly, www.ConerlyConsulting.com. Click on each graph below to enlarge.
Charts are in PDF at: http://www.ConerlyConsulting.com

Sustainable Sites Initiative releases landscape guidelines

The Sustainable Sites Initiative has released the nation’s first rating system for the design, construction and maintenance of sustainable landscapes, with or without buildings. It was developed through a partnership of the American Society of Landscape Architects, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and the U.S. Botanic Garden. The initiative’s rating system represents 4 years of work by the country’s leading sustainability experts, scientists and design professionals, as well as public input.

“While carbon-neutral performance remains the holy grail for green buildings, sustainable landscapes move beyond a do-no-harm approach,” said Nancy Somerville, exec. v.p. and CEO of ASLA. “Landscapes sequester carbon, clean the air and water, increase energy efficiency, restore habitats and ultimately give back through significant economic, social and environmental benefits never fully measured until now.”

“We are facing unprecedented environmental challenges such as water scarcity and climate change that require fundamental changes in the way that we interact with the land,” said Susan Rieff, exec. director of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center at Univ. of Texas at Austin. “This voluntary rating system and guidelines covers all aspects of working with outdoor spaces of all sizes, and provides information for designing landscapes that go beyond beauty to actually improving ecosystem health and the health of communities for generations to come.”

The rating system works on a 250-point scale, with levels of achievement for obtaining 40%, 50%, 60% or 80% of available points, recognized with one through four stars, respectively. If prerequisites are met, points are awarded through the 51 credits covering areas such as the use of greenfields, brownfields or greyfields; materials; soils and vegetation; construction and maintenance. These credits can apply to projects ranging from corporate campuses, transportation corridors, public parks and single-family residences. The rating system is part of two new reports issued from the initiative, “The Case for Sustainable Landscapes” and “Guidelines and Performance Benchmarks 2009.”

To test the rating system, the initiative opened a call for pilot projects in conjunction with the release of the rating system. Any type of designed landscape is eligible, so long as the project size is at least 2,000 sq. ft. The call will remain open until Feb. 15, 2010, and the initiative will work with and oversee the projects during the two-year process.

HT: Garden Center Magazine