Supporters of Made in the USA jobs should organize a massive Labor Day march on Washington as the 2012 campaign begins in earnest. Let's take back America from the futility of punishing joblessness. Let's begin with a million men coming to Washington, alongside a million women, waving millions of American flags, supporting Made in the USA jobs on the day that honors labor.
An American jobs march could be the largest such event in American political history because it would speak for a gigantic swath of America that hungers and yearns for American jobs, and does not believe its voice is heard in Washington.
A Labor Day Made in the USA jobs march would dramatize the breadth, intensity and power of support for American jobs and send a thundering message to Washington.
A Labor Day march for jobs would bring together blue-collar workers and small businesses throughout the nation. It would unite police, firefighters, teachers, family farmers, veterans supporting jobs for troops returning from combat, leading groups from the black and Hispanic communities, voices for young people and women, organized labor, homebuilders and homeowners, major consumer groups and venture capitalists who finance job-creating businesses.
As July 4 approaches, the House and Senate will recess. The next monthly ADP jobs report will be released July 7. The government's monthly report will be released July 8. This will be the jobless July 4 and the jobless July 4 recess.
The smart political move for the president and members of Congress would be to clearly, visibly and aggressively champion red, white and blue American jobs from July 4 through Labor Day.
A massive Labor Day March on Washington for jobs would dramatize and mobilize support for ideas and proposals that can make a real difference.
A Labor Day march would ignore bogus proposals to reward giant global conglomerate jobs exporters that are hoarding some $2 trillion of cash and "investing" in machinery that replaces human beings. It would support the real job creators, such as small businesses on Main Street, Made in America manufacturers, companies that repatriate jobs to America, new homegrown startup companies and demand-creating American consumers loyal to job-creating American firms.
I propose a standing ovation for the "patriotic millionaires" who recently held a press conference proposing they give up their Bush tax cuts. Let's promote the patriotic capitalism for America that a Labor Day march for Made in the USA jobs would stand for and inspire.
A Labor Day march would not only inaugurate the 2012 campaign by putting jobs at the top of the agenda in Washington, as it is in America. It would begin to rally voter and consumer confidence going into the 2011 holiday season. The cavalry is coming. We the people are the cavalry.
The common sense of the deficit issue is clear. The prime directive is to promote jobs and growth in 2011 and honest, credible deficit reduction starting in 2012. This is the deal that makes sense. The job-creation initiative must be real and not bogus. The long-term deficit reduction must be real and not bogus.
The American people must be brought into the center of the process and not insulted as bystanders while insiders keep negotiating backroom deals and keep forcing our people, and members of Congress, to repeatedly choose at the eleventh hour and 59th minute between a fait accompli, government shutdown or global crash.
A Labor Day March on Washington for Made in the USA jobs will send a powerful and resounding message that Americans want American jobs, that we are not a banana republic doomed to permanently punishing joblessness that dramatically adds to permanently crippling deficits.
We Americans are a great nation and a good people with an entrepreneurial drive and unity of patriotic purpose. Let those who stand for Gilded Age greed and the impotence of believing there are no fixes stay home, while those ready to restore the economic greatness of America come to Washington to speak as one, and make our voices heard.
This column was originally published at The Hill.
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The government we have is keenly attuned to these votes. Our Senators and Congressmen are determined not to get kicked out of office in the next election, and therefore they act the way they do. Marches and demonstrations will change nothing.
Unfortunately, it often takes real pain in one's own personal experience that forces a more compassionate viewpoint towards others in the same predicament.
1. Solve unemployment crises.
2. Solve education dilemma with a high (50%) school drop-out and additional 25% college drop out.
3. Shrink the healthcare crises caused by lack of illness-prevention and end-of-life care; costing 50% of all healthcare costs; which is 2 trillion dollars.
4. Reduce the cost of managing chronic illness and nursing home which accounts for 75% of healthcare costs and 70% of deaths.
5. Reduce the 50% divorce rate.
6. Reduce the high incidence of depression in adults and children.
7. Reduce the high incidence of stress and stress-related disorders.
8. Decrease the consumption of junk, fast-foods, prepared foods and alcohol.
9. Rediscover the value of family, (near and extended), neighborhood and society.
10. Rediscover the importance of cultural values and ties.
Any one of the above should give us pause to realize what we are doing to ourselves; and how history will judge and evaluate present civilization. Yet long before history judges us, our children and grandchildren will judge us by the type of America we leave them; including the massive debt.
Single earner may be the woman who commonly is the higher earner.
Elizabeth Warren's lecture adds the science to what I wrote.
The first step to financial instability is the big house, a multitude of appliances and cars purchased by a two earner family partially on the assuarance of two incomes.
The second weak link leading to the collapse of two earner family is the lack of back-up and /or extended family support during period of uncertainity making the event into a crises.
The third weak link not mentioned in the talk is the 50% divorce rate which doubles the cost of a family.
http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-giving-away-american-jobs
stop giving away our jobs
This government, both parties, are unwilling and unable to do what it takes to allow job creation. A change in the White House or the Senate or the House would make no difference. The major parties are indebted to too many organizations that want things to stay the way they are.
It's time to plan for a genuine change in the structure of our government.
Never underestimate the emotion behind the march.
If that emotion is real, not superficial, bought, or perfunctory in any way, change will come.
Solidarity is more than a word. A movement is more than just a march.
I have great confidence in the incompetence of our legislators. They can't improve the job situation even if they had only this one task to master.
Like 'American Idol', everyone concerned about job creation must be laser focused on finding these startup entrepreneurs and bolstering their efforts. But most importantly these startup entrepreneurs must vow to keep all jobs in the USA and never to outsource.
Government can HELP to create jobs by providing GRANTS and tax-breaks for innovative startups.
SBA loans won't cut it.
Innovation and global market demand - is the ONLY source for stable and well-paying jobs. We simply need to accelerate the process.
Visit the Kaufmann Foundation for Entrepreneurship website. Kaufmann's statistics clearly show that only STARTUP companies generated jobs in the last 10 years. Existing corporate CEOs on the other hand are firing faster than they can hire (i.e. negative job creation).
So yes indeed take to the streets (trust me on this - it is VERY effective), but be sure that you all are not barking up the wrong tree, asking solutions from politicians who are totally clueless about how to create millions of jobs.
Ask innovative entrepreneurs to join you and show you how they intend to create thousands of jobs by manufacturing and exporting products that are 'Made in the USA'.
I own two high-growth startups. 'Nuff said.
It will take a massive amount of investments to get back to the pre-recession employment level. Only the Government has the power to bootstrap these investments; private companies and banks are hoarding cash, afraid a of double-dip recession, and squeezing more productivity out of their current workers.
Also, we can't forget that 70% of pre-recession GDP was coming from consumer purchases, with people getting cheap money from home-equity loans (on over-valued homes) and credit-card companies eager to lend to people who couldn't afford these purchases. These days are over, so America needs to find another way to create jobs, for instance exporting goods rather than consuming them.
I believe that a strong green economy will allow to get back some (but not all) of these jobs. Slowing the import of crude oil will save money that can be re-invested in new, green technologies and local manufacturing. However, to do that, The Obama administration and Congress need to start working on comprehensive energy policy. Chances of that happening before the elections are close to nil.
What remains is a vanishing middle class, a bunch of have-nots, and a few haves who puppeteer the entire mechanical system. Trouble is, machines don't need or buy goods; people do. So governments supplement human income and go deeper into debt.
The solution? First, we accept the problem is structural, and that 40 hours no longer works. Second, we reduce the spread between highest and lowest wage to perhaps no more than 10%, eliminating millionaires versus folks earning $7.50 an hour. Third, we decouple wages from time, and instead attach them to POSITION. All jobs pay about the same, no matter how many hours they involve. Fourth, we invite people to contribute LESS labor and MORE intelligence, experience, wisdom, skill, passion, talent, artistic perspective, ingenuity, imagination and creativity into the system. None of that is measured hourly, but by application and challenge being addressed. That's a start...!
Professional pols and their facilitators in media have long made it their opinion that such social unrest is passe, and requires but seconds of the news hole and nearly no attention whatsoever in the halls of Congress.