ICYMI: Innovation, Margaret Thatcher and 7 stories you may have missed

Every Monday, one Marketplace staff member offers their favorite stories from the past week. Here’s a quick hit of some of the things that caught my ear on the Marketplace airwaves recently.

• Should you include your race on your resume? Not something I’ve thought much about. As a white person, it’s easy to think sometimes that we’ve achieved a color-blind society. But of course, race can still play a major role in the workplace. We tackled the topic on last weekend’s Marketplace Money.

• With the passing of Britain’s Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher, we came up with a couple of nice ways on the PM program to look at her economic legacy and have a bit of fun.

• I was happy to hear that innovation is not just the purview of the young in an interview done by Jeremy Hobson on Marketplace Morning Report on Monday.

• While we’re on the topic of innovation, our sustainability reporter Scott Tong did a nice spot on Tuesday’s afternoon show about what the impending bankruptcy of Fisker motors says about differences towards innovation on the East versus West Coasts. I liked this story a lot because Scott had a really original angle that I wasn’t hearing anywhere else in the coverage of Fisker’s woes.

• We took a more tech-focused look at Fisker with David Brancaccio and our Marketplace Tech cast.

• Pausing for a moment for a nod to a really strong freelance piece on Thursday: Youth Radio’s enterprise reporting on what it’s like to have a juvenile record and be looking for work. I thought this piece had strong voices and gave me a great sense of how mistakes made at a young age can cost you so much.

• And finally, to end on a light note: Sabri Ben-Achour did a fun piece on the lunatics, uh athletes, who run the North Pole marathon and how much it costs to pull it off.

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ICYMI: Innovation, Margaret Thatcher and 7 stories you may have missed

Margaret Thatcher"s foes turned anger into big business, and a soundtrack for the "80s

Hating Margaret Thatcher wasn’t just a political stance. It became something of an industry. From punk rock to TV and magazine satires, many entertainers and writers profited by criticizing her policies.

“She diminished a lot of cultural funding. She put the BBC really in her sites,” explains Toby Miller, professor of cultural studies at City University in London. In turn, the BBC put Thatcher in its sites, lampooning her in comedies, such as “Friday Night Live” and critiquing her policies in dramas, such as “Edge of Darkness.” The BBC hit “Dr. Who” even created a Thatcher-like character, Helen A, ruler of humans on Terra Firma.

“There was a lot of cultural creativity that managed to express what wasn’t really getting heard in the mainstream newspapers,” Miller says.

And then there was the music.

“No political figure in British politics has inspired quite so many songs that Margaret Thatcher has inspired,” says Paul Williams, head of business analysis for Music Week. “She certainly was very inspirational in terms of bringing out an anger.” 

Williams says the punk movement gained a lot of momentum and global interest because of Thatcher’s policies. Thatcher became a sort of anti-muse for The Clash, Elvis Costello and Pink Floyd. Billy Bragg practically made a cottage industry out of hating the conservative prime minister.

 

 

And it wasn’t just British audiences getting the message.

“I can remember being a preteen listening to Pink Floyd’s ‘The Final Cut’ and wondering, who’s this Maggie he’s so mad at?” says Aram Sinnreich, a professor of media at Rutgers University.

He says during the ’80s, cable TV and, specifically, MTV were coming of age, and that put a lot of British music in front of an American audience. “The digital era was just beginning,” he says. “You saw the rise of cable TV, especially of MTV and really the globalization of our media infrastructure… Because of that, the vitriolic hatred a lot of musicians had for Thatcher at the time was imported to us.”

Sinnreich doubts punk would have become the global movement it did without Thatcher.

“She really galvanized the culture war’s troops in England and helped them amplify their message,” he says. ”It’s kind of ironic, because the deregulation that was one of the hallmarks of the politics that Thatcher herself espoused, lead to this explosion of anti-Thatcherist sentiment within the U.S. marketplace and around the globe.”

Sinnreich says thanks to that, the anti-Thatcher industry turned into a profitable export.

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Margaret Thatcher"s foes turned anger into big business, and a soundtrack for the "80s

Margaret Thatcher"s legacy: Three things that changed for the U.K.

Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, also known as “The Iron Lady,” died on Monday.

A leader whose tactics and policies were widely disputed during and after her 11-year term (the longest for any British politician), Thatcher made a lasting impact on the nation — economically, socially and culturally.

She was steadfast on her set of principles, which became known as “Thatcherism.” What exactly were those priniples? According to the New York Times they’re “the belief that economic freedom and individual liberty are interdependent, that personal responsibility and hard work are the only ways to national prosperity, and that the free-market democracies must stand firm against aggression.”

Here are three of the policies that’ll remain in her legacy:

1. Raising the tax burden.

Denying the advice of many academic economists at the time, she raised the tax burden and curtailed public sector budgets. According to the BBC, 364 of Britain’s leading economists condemned her policies in a letter to the Times, predicting a worsening slump in a recession already marked by mass unemployment. But the following eight years saw economic revival with annual growth above 3 percent.

2. Breaking labor unions.

Thatcher broke the power of the labor unions. She stood against the all-powerful National Union of Mineworkers and announced plans to shut down several plants and eliminate thousands of jobs. A violent strike by coal miners erupted. It lasted nearly a year, but ended without settlement — though with Thatcher as the clear victor.

3. “Popular Capitalism.”

Thatcher pushed hard for bringing “popular capitalism” to Britain, moving major state industries like telephones and gas supply to the private sector. The economy thrived to the point that in 1985, the Treasury announced it would not need deficit spending in the next fiscal budget.

What Thatcher didn’t change

Nonetheless, Thatcher did face a number of drawbacks.

She did not follow through with her plans to privatize the water industry or the National Health Service, and failed to revamp Social Security. Inflation rose and inflation rates remained high. Among political tensions, she resigned from office in 1990.

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Margaret Thatcher"s legacy: Three things that changed for the U.K.

PODCAST: The legacy of Margaret Thatcher, a growing salary gap

Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first female Prime Minister, died Monday from a stroke. She was 87. Known as the “Iron Lady” for her strong and uncompromising leadership style, Thatcher led a conservative economic resurgence in the U.K. during the 1980s. Thatcher, who served office from 1979 to 1990, reduced the power of labor unions, privatized state-owned airlines, car companies and other assets, and championed financial deregulation. As a result of the so-called “Thatcher revolution,” Britain became more entrepreneurial, and according to some, more efficient.

First quarter earnings come out as the stock markets hit all-time highs. But investors could be more interested in what happens the rest of the year. There are two words that sum up Wall street’s mood for first quarter earnings: Cautiously optimistic.

A new report out today by the American Association of University Professors reveals a widening salary gap between public and private university professors. Given the dismal outlook of State budgets across the country, public universities will have to find a way to compete for talent with fewer resources than their private counterparts. For a doctoral professor at public research university the average salary this year is $ 123,393. That same professor at a private university makes just over $ 167,118. It’s a gap that’s grown since last year.

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PODCAST: The legacy of Margaret Thatcher, a growing salary gap

Margaret Thatcher"s economic legacy

Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first female Prime Minister, died Monday from a stroke at age 87. Known as the “Iron Lady” for her strong and uncompromising leadership style, Thatcher led a conservative economic resurgence in the UK during the 1980s.

Thatcher, who served office from 1979 to 1990, reduced the power of labor unions, privatized state-owned airlines, car companies and other assets, and championed financial deregulation. As a result of the so-called “Thatcher revolution,” Britain became more entrepreneurial, and according to some, more efficient.

“She shook up and modernized Britain, perhaps more than any other British peace time leader in the twentieth century,” says Marketplace’s London Bureau Chief, Stephen Beard.

Yet Thatcher’s policies, while transformative, weren’t lauded by all. Shipbuilders, coal miners, and others in industries where her policies led to high unemployment, bitterly resented her economic influence. The recent financial crisis of 2007 and 2008 also raised new questions about Thatcher’s legacy. Even among those who supported the prime minister, there is now a sense that she may have allowed Britain to become too dependent on banking and finance. 

To hear more about Margaret Thatcher and her effect in and outside of the U.K., click on the audio player above.

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Margaret Thatcher"s economic legacy