This week, House Republican Leader, John Boehner, called on President Obama to fire his economic team. As recovery wanes, dissatisfaction runs deep, but this public appeal seems more the initiate of a campaign for majority House Speaker than the proffer of solution to the financial downturn that plagues our nation. While I agree that Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers have not delivered on the administration's promise of economic recovery, we need not a change of the guard and a revamp of rhetoric -- we need a business plan to rebuild America.
Only changes in policy will ignite job creation and fuel a sustainable economic turnaround. The urgency of transformation is more about principle than people. Infrastructure issues demand appropriate actions. We must make a commitment to manufacturing and modify policies to support that pledge. Many foreign countries subsidize raw materials by as much as 30% - this equates to dumping, not free trade. Such truth belies America's inability to compete in the global economy. We close our eyes to what we choose not to see. Immediate changes to policy could put Americans to work now, and place our country on the fast track to a sustained recovery.
The United States government should subsidize value-added jobs, and mandate their Department of Defense's $140 billion procurement budget be spent on American manufactured goods. To witness the wisdom of subsidized employment, we need look no farther than Germany. Germans take pride in their industrial base; America once shared that sentiment. Today, Germany's unemployment rate is 7.6%, 3 million of a total workforce of 42 million. America's current 9.5% unemployment rate equals almost 15 million out-of-work citizens. The more accurate count of unemployed hovers at 30 million when including the discouraged workers, the part-timers who long for full-time positions and the permanently unemployed. Germany has successfully maintained its manufacturing workforce by assisting employers through a program affectionately called "short work." In essence, during times of economic distress, workers are granted reduced hours by companies while the German government supports their wages up to 85% of full-time salary. In Germany, they pay their citizens to work -- Americans are paid to stay home. Subsidized employment does not equate to additional government or taxpayer costs. Rather, it is the difference between an expensive band-aid and less costly value-added solution; the government contribution to workers' paychecks is an alternative to unemployment benefits. Companies that would otherwise engage in mass layoffs or liquidate are provided with temporary support to keep workers employed. More companies survive downturns, benefits are shorter in duration and the debate on benefit abuse is eradicated. Each job saved is multiplied by at least 5 more employed as an economic effect on a town or city. Executed properly, this is a win-win.
Involuntary unemployment has devastating effects on American workers and families. Studies show job loss correlates to depression and despair to illness, creating a downward spiral of government costs beyond benefits. Loss of American employment decreases household wealth, reducing consumption of locally manufactured goods and further stifling job creation. Joblessness, homelessness and hopelessness have enveloped our nation.
As November's mid-term elections approach, politicians will engage in negative debate and critique absent solutions, bringing us no closer to job creation and economic growth. Rebuilding America must start with a plan, not politics. Subsidized employment and the sole source allocation of Department of Defense dollars to American goods must be followed by trade policies that eradicate foreign advantage. The Department of Defense's $140 billion procurement budget equates to revenues of General Electric, America's second largest employer with more than 300,000 workers. Buying American could create hundreds of thousands of new jobs. Rather than political sparring and stonewalling, a more noble approach would be to stand shoulder to shoulder to create employment and rebuild America. A business plan to restructure our economy can be designed -- the tools are within our reach. It starts with a commitment to our nation that overshadows party loyalties and ideological preconceptions.
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We cannot expect politians on their high horses who bribe each other and condut insider trading to get laws passed with NO pork in them. Ges. If we mere mortals did the same thing to get business, we'd be in jail. hy not them?
This Second Great Depression (call it whatever name you prefer) can end by mobilizing to supersede fossil fuels in time to avoid what may be life threatening Global Warming.
See the analysis pro and con concerning the threat of a possible climate Tipping Point at http://www.aesopinstitute.org
If, as I believe, the threat proves to be real, we need a worldwide effort to leave fossil fuels behind much faster than conventional wisdom would believe is possible.
In spite of a legion of skeptics, it can be done!
A Human Investment Tax Credit program can assist up to 4 million small businesses and generate as many as 6 million jobs. See it on the same Aesop website.
Revolutionary, cost-competitive, breakthrough renewable technologies are being born. They can supplement the truly effective carbon free systems already available.
A few months after Pearl Harbor was attacked, Ford completed a bomber every 59 minutes at the Willow Run factory.
That same kind of enthusiastic 24/7 effort can dramatically reduce unemployment.
It will inherently produce the missing economic stimulus.
Ironically, this approach will have found a way to regain real economic health that, once the threat is widely understood, can enjoy strong White House and Congressional support.
Insuring reasonable odds for the survival of our children and grandchildren has the potential to provide an emotional force that can awaken widespread latent leadership.
We have met the enemy and it is ourselves.
There is nothing more saddening or devastating than the misery caused by mass unemployment that existed in countries such as Mexico or Asia in the last century before these third world countries industrialized. I have visited Asia several times on Business in the last part of the 20th century. Crime, family abandonment, divorce, selling your own 12 year old (and younger) daughters for the equivalent of about $45 in the 1990's for 10 years of indentured servitude to the brothels, selling your 12 year old sons to the rug weavers for about the same price, to feed your wife and remaining children.
Our basic industries such as steel, computer chip manufacturing, petrochemical refining, appliance manufacturing, tire manufacturing, automobile parts manufacturing, aircraft manufacturing, textiles, and etc. have been decimated and/or totally eliminated from this country by Democrats and Republicans in the US congress that created the US government free trade laws and environmental laws that caused US jobs and factories to leave the USA in the last few decades.
Even if the USA started to re-industrialize today, it would take decades to re-create the human scientific, engineering, manufacturing and industrial technology databases required to re-create the industrial production bases that we destroyed in the past few decades.
We needed to correct the Foreign Trade Deficit and the Federal Spending Deficit, which are the structural foundation portions of the US Economy that has failed.
At 71, the US government will destroy the economy after I die, but I care for my children and the future genetations that will have to pay for the unproductive US lifestyle.
"I second that emotion"
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If any US citizen, business, and corporation chosees to use US labor and US environmental costs to produce their product in the USA, they will be underpriced by their competitors that took advantage of the "FREE TRADE" laws created by the elected Democrat and Republican members of the US Congress to use foreign labor and foreign country environmental laws.
Free Trade means that US workers must (generally) compete with foreign worker pay scales, foreign benefit packages (none), the more productive foreign labor work rules (none), and the lower environmental manufacturing costs that are available in foreign countries.
We need to repeal all of the "Free Trade" laws and other anti-business laws that were created in the last 40 years, and then the corporations (and/or individual businessmen) could not outsource the manufacturing jobs to foreigners because of the extremely high US import tariffs that we could re-impose to protect our US jobs.
The Democrat and the Republican party members of the US congress and the US Senate created the "Free Trade" laws and other anti-business laws that caused (allowed) the US businesses to move their US factories and US jobs overseas and then lay off all of their US employees and take advantage of lower labor and environmental costs available in foreign countries.