Today's new unemployment report contains no news, just decimal point changes. It tells us what we already know, that times are bad. The question is whether our great nation can rise to the challenge.
Unemployment remains unchanged at 9.5 percent, with 14.6 million people out of work. In July, we lost 202,000 jobs in the government sector as the census winds down, and we gained 71,000 jobs in the private sector. African American unemployment grew fractionally worse to 15.6 percent, and teenagers to 26.1 percent.
But the micro details don't change the big picture. People are out of work and out of hope. Mortgages are underwater, savings are in the tank and fewer than half of grown-ups think their kids will be better off.
So what are we going to do about it? Our 200 year old democracy ended slavery and turned the Great Depression into the New Deal. Can we thrive in this century too?
We know what doesn't work. Asset bubbles and trade deficits. Tax cuts and supply side economics. Shopping for cheap stuff made in China.
The House of Representatives new Make it in America initiative makes a conceptual break. It challenges conventional wisdom and brings us back to our industrial, productive past. The knowledge economy is good, as far as it goes -- but a country still needs things. Cars, computers, pencils and iPods. If we don't make those things ourselves, we have to pay someone else for them. Our deficit in goods dwarfs our surplus in services. During the eight years of the Bush administration, America accumulated a surplus of $755 billion in services -- but a $5.9 trillion deficit in goods.
Source: US Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Manufacturing brings new wealth into the country and puts people to work in good, middle-class jobs. Every manufacturing job supports as many as four other jobs, as production workers buy meals, legal services and advertising from other sectors of the economy.
The House manufacturing strategy starts out with small steps. Last week the House passed the Clean Energy Technology Manufacturing and Export Assistance Act (H.R. 5156), which offers modest subsidies to help our exports of clean energy products compete with the subsidies of other countries. It passed the National Manufacturing Strategy Act (HR 4692), which would require the administration to develop an overall manufacturing strategy and update it regularly.
But at the same time, the House failed to pass the Investing in American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act (H.R. 5893), which eliminates tax breaks for companies that ship taxes overseas. Republicans were unified in opposition. Thus, our government continues to subsidize companies that move jobs offshore.
Small steps and setbacks in the House, likely death in the Senate ... but at least Democrats are trying. Voters can see where Democrats want to go, and who's stopping them.
In June, Barack Obama spelled out the challenge: "[A]s we emerge from this recession, we can't afford to return to the pre-crisis status quo. We can't go back to an economy that was too dependent on bubbles and debt and financial speculation. We can't accept economic growth that leaves the middle class owing more and making less. We have to build a new and stronger foundation for growth and prosperity."
Earlier this week speaking at the AFL-CIO, Obama reminded people that it took a decade to drive us into the ditch, and it will take that long to dig us out. "When you're in a car and you want to go forward, you put it in "D." You want to go back in the ditch, you put it on "R."
We know what we need to do. Put people to work rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure. Fix our potholed roads, our overcrowded schools and our bursting water mains. Create new infrastructure like wind turbines and solar cells. Lay the tracks for high speed rail, the 21st century parallel to the interstate highways of the 20th century and the transcontinental railroads of the 19th. And make the parts in America! Put us to work building our economy of the future, like our grandparents did for us.
Yes, it will cost money. But don't worry, money is out there. Those top end Bush tax cuts are worth $43 billion annually. Restoring the estate tax for multi-millionaires brings in $50 billion. A financial transaction tax brings in $177 billion annually, and stabilizes our financial system to boot. Draw down our troops and rein in Pentagon procurements gives us another $100 billion every year for productive endeavors. That's without even trying bold new sources of revenue. More progressive taxation at the top end. Confronting corporate power and redirecting subsidies that go to agriculture, oil and pharmaceutical giants. Ferreting out the rest of those tax subsidies to move production offshore. We can do this.
Stop counting votes in the Senate! Introduce the bill. Put it to a vote. Dare the Republicans to go on record against a jobs program like this.
Today's news is unemployment figures. In November, there's an election. Which way do we want to go? Back to Bush? Or working together to build a new foundation? Forget the micro data. Remember who we are.
This piece originally appeared at the Campaign for America's Future.
Therefore, in order to safeguard the interests of the vast majority of Americans (to quantify, 97.38%, or 301.33 mn people who are not manufacturing production workers), it should be Policy Priority No. 1 to ensure that protectionists are shouted down.
After all, the USA is made up of 100% consumers, only 2.61% of whom are also production workers.
Where’s the consumer lobby?
http://www.eutimes.net/2010/08/obama-tells-students-its-true-im-not-american-i-come-from-kenya/
There is simply no incentive to hire Americans. The trade deficit is enormous, but the same folk that profit on outsourcing jobs, profit on importing cheap low quality goods that unemployed Americans can afford.
General Motors will invest $500 million to produce a new vehicle and eight-cylinder engines in a plant in northeastern Mexico, a company spokesman said on August 4.
$500 million of our tax dollars!!!
http://industryweek.com/articles/gm_to_build_new_vehicle__at_plant_in_mexico_22462.aspx
http://industryweek.com/articles/gm_to_build_new_vehicle__at_plant_in_mexico_22462.aspx
I agree with you that real wealth is created and/or acquired ONLY when the members of a family (or a nation, city-state, island, tribe, etc.) plant, grow and/or harvest something of commercial value from the earth; extract something of commercial value from the earth; provide professional services (medical, legal, dental, engineering, architecture, accounting, land surveying, technology, etc.); and/or manufactures or constructs something of commercial value that is consumable (or permanently useful for income or rent); and then trades, sells, leases or rents these items and/or services to parties outside of their family, in return for a net transfer of gold, currency or commodities from other parties outside of their family into their own family.
The members of that family can then reflect their real wealth and financial security with the net positive accumulation of grain, gold, cattle, jewels, land, buildings, factories, commodities and/or other marketable products for reserve use in times of emergency and/or also to raise the standard of living for the members of that family.
We must correct the Foreign Trade Balance by any means necessary.
Free World Trade of products and commodities means that every US business must compete internationally based mainly upon price of the product to the final customer (and/or by bribing various government officials). Labor cost is normally the greatest cost component of most products and commodities, closely followed by environmental costs. The country with the lowest labor cost and environmental cost normally gets the product sale and the manufacturing jobs, and the import of foreign exchange currency in exchange for these products.
If the USA had innovative products that foreigners did not have, then the USA could get higher prices for those products, until the foreigners copy the US inventions.
The US government has also destroyed the US Technical database that was previously used to create those innovations, patents, and inventions, and it will take generations to re-create that capability that won WWII and gave US citizens a bountiful lifestyle for a couple of decades after WWII.
We are today living in an America designed and produced by Republican policy. Concentration of wealth is at its highest level since the Great Depression. The GDP continues to grow but unemployment is steady and wages are dropping. We’re told that we have a “jobless recovery,” which for all but the most wealthy means NO RECOVERY AT ALL. The very term is oxymoronic and should cause fits of cognitive dissonance.
This is class warfare. It’s between the top 2% and everyone else. Sadly, far too many conservative middle class Americans have mistakenly taken the wrong side. They’ve bought the lies and fight toward their own demise. The solution is not in raging against these people but in understanding their concerns and sharing the facts. The line had been drawn in the sand: http://www.thinkersjam.com/democrats-draw-a-line-in-the-sand/, we need but get everyone to understand that.
I am so sick of hearing about infrastructure and green jobs! Whoe does this benefit? Union contractors spreading asphalt. What about the administrator out of work already. Nothing! What about the self employed guy who lost his cleaning company. Nothing! What about the guy who used to frame houses? Nothing! What about the woman working for a caterer? Nothing. Handouts to political cronies. Nothing more.
Because that is the problem here, foreign labor costs are can be so low, and tariffs are low on "American" companies re-importing their foreign manufactured goods.
Blaming Liberals for the economic policies of the Bush administration is simply bias, not fact based.
Conservatives allowed the outsourcing of 12 million jobs, Conservatives failed to oversee the financial industry that led to the collapse.
Perhaps you should start there.
And now, companies are not re-hiring because they believe they can continue to run their businesses with skeleton crews, and it's only a matter of time before the American workers have a revolt. Companies are keeping their profits because of greed, not because they are unsure about the economy. So remember, businesses are self serving. Nothing is improving for the workers of this country.
Americans are being manipulated the same way third world countries are by corrupt, greedy politicians that keep their people uneducated and powerless so they cannot fight back.
Why are we still listening to the stupid people?