The DIY Approach to Job Creation

Like a bad penny, glum news about the U.S. economy continues to turn up. Lawmakers just narrowly avoided a government shutdown...again and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke recently called the unemployment situation a "national crisis." Neither situation bodes well for the significant reform proposals that the super committee on deficit reduction is required to unveil in November.

The President for his part is touring the nation and selling his jobs bill with the message that it will put people back to work. All the while, Congress is trying to determine what job-creating policies, if any, they can pass into law in this political climate.

There is no doubt that we need more Americans earning a paycheck and contributing to the treasury to get our economy back on track. But, putting people back to work does not necessarily mean giving a corporation an incentive to hire. In fact, the best job for some of the nine million unemployed could be one they create for themselves: self-employment.

Not everyone may know what it takes to start, run and grow a small business, but there are resources that can help entrepreneurs successfully launch a new venture. There are also 22 million self-employed business owners already proving it is possible to be your own boss. Creating a national self-employment initiative to help those ranks grow could present a solution to both our employment and deficit crises.

 

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Comments

[edmundavolio]

03:17 AM on 10/12/2011

The only solution to the US unemployment and debt crisis is to have congress and the President require that products SOLD in the US be made with the same laws required of products made in the US. This means a minimum wage of $7.25/hr., all environmental protection, all worker safety requirements, all worker comp costs and all child labor laws required of US produced products. Until this is required, no amount of ingenuity, technology, or tax breaks will overcome $1.17/hr. wages in China or 50 cents/hr. in Indonesia and the lack of significant environmental etc. mandates.

[des946]

09:29 AM on 10/12/2011

yours is a theoretical "good idea"; but completely 100% implausible as being realistic. If we could control what is done in other countries, then there wouldn't be global economic problems or an economic crisis in our country. A major MAJOR problem is that the USA is confronted by global competition that we have never had to deal with 9compete with) . . . it is atwo edged sword of sorts . . . other countries are competing with our historic global "customers" and our manufacturing in the USA has been decimated by "outsourcing" which contributed greatly to our global competition . Basically, via outsourcing, we have set up our global competitiors; andnow that they are established, they do NOT need us as much as they originally did. Now they are quite capable of operating independently from us. Yes,they need us as future customers; but we've "given away" our means of production to compete against them . . . we have become almost "captive customers' of them because of their lower sales prices. Changing this situation will require DECADES of development in the USA. We can get nto "tarrif wars' with them; and the American consumers will pay the price at a time when they are economically stressed to their financial limits. There are no "easy and quick resolutions" it takes as long to fill a hole as it did to dig it. to all of this

[edmundavolio]

03:54 PM on 10/18/2011

Des986, I don’t see an impossible solution. Congress has passed laws that mandate production costs on US manufactured products. All I am suggesting is that they make such law apply to products sold in the US. In effect, Congress has imposed tariffs on US made products that now make US produced products more expensive than products produced in underdeveloped countries like China, Indonesia, Columbia etc. The US checks domestic manufacturers regarding living up to the laws. I don’t see a problem in having offshore producers pay for inspection of production regarding pay, environmental, safety and child labor laws by US agents. If a country wants to sell in the US, they must obey the same production laws that US producers obey. In fact, I am for universal free trade as long as products sold in the US meet the same laws as made in the US. Such a proposal is made impossible at the present time by a mostly corrupt congress in the pay of Multinationals. A good benchmark is that congress just passed an FTA with Columbia, S. Korea and ?. They use the argument that such a treaty would create 13,000 jobs, this despite that one Economic Institute claims it would cost 200,000 jobs. President Obama said this would allow Columbians to buy American made cars. I’d like to know how an average wage earner with a monthly wage of $325.00 can buy $20,000 cars.