They'll do anything for a buck. I've been quoting the distinguished Princeton economist, Alan Blinder, who projected a few years ago that the United States would lose thirty to forty million jobs in the next ten years to off-shoring. Now comes my friend in The Washington Post (2/19/10) with an editorial, "Getting the biggest bang for job -- creation bucks."
He writes about job creation when the problem is job loss from off-shoring. It's intentional. The economists don't want to recognize that globalization is nothing more than a trade or economic war with production looking for a cheaper country to produce. And the government is the "comparative advantage." But the economists insist that our government do nothing.
Blinder writes that the best two ways to create jobs is either a general stimulus or a target stimulus when he knows that stimulation isn't working. President George W. Bush stimulated the economy for eight years by increasing the national debt $5 trillion. And household debt increased or stimulated $7 trillion during the same period, for a total of $12 trillion stimulation in eight years. When President Obama came to office the economy was over-stimulated and, with a $2 ½ trillion stimulation with the Paulson plan, the Obama plan, and the Federal Reserve, we're still losing jobs.
South Carolina just created or stimulated 3,500 jobs with an industrial policy to attract the manufacture of Boeing's Dreamliner. The need for jobs, both creation and retention, is for President Obama to immediately launch an industrial policy to compete in globalization. But Krugman, Blinder, and all the other national economists obsequiously parrot Wall Street's "free trade," "protectionism" nonsense for the big, profits, big bonuses, and big economists' salaries. Business can make more money in China. But our economy suffers fatal injury. It's not just jobs. Microsoft, Intel, General Motors all have proved that it is investment, research, technology, development, production, that follows the jobs. It's the economy, and the U. S. economy is at stake. The most competitive people are being told by Blinder and his kind that it's economically wrong to compete.
We used to follow the wishes of business in Congress, but Wall Street, the big banks and big business are no longer interested in the economy of the United States but the economy of China, India, or wherever they're investing. President Obama and the Congress are out on their own with the responsibility for the economy and fashioning an industrial policy that will be opposed by the Business Roundtable and the U. S. Chamber of Commerce.
I have outlined time and again the beginning of an industrial policy, but the economists give the President and the Congress credibility for doing nothing. So, all I can do is rephrase Shakespeare's line in "Henry VI," "First, we must kill all the economists."