It's Jobs and then it's Jobs and after that it's Jobs

Consider: in 1928 the richest 1 percent of Americans received 23.9 percent of the nation's total income. After that, the share going to the richest 1 percent steadily declined. New Deal reforms, followed by World War II, the GI Bill and the Great Society expanded the circle of prosperity. By the late 1970s the top 1 percent raked in only 8 to 9 percent of America's total annual income. But after that, inequality began to widen again, and income re-concentrated at the top. By 2007 the richest 1 percent were back to where they were in 1928—with 23.5 percent of the total.

Each of America's two biggest economic crashes occurred in the year immediately following these twin peaks—in 1929 and 2008. This is no mere coincidence. When most of the gains from economic growth go to a small sliver of Americans at the top, the rest don't have enough purchasing power to buy what the economy is capable of producing.

Robert Reich, The Nation, July, 2010 

 The first task is to rebuild our industrial commons. We should develop a system of financial incentives: Levy an extra tax on the product of off-shored labor. (If the result is a trade war, treat it like other wars—fight to win.) Keep that money separate. Deposit it in the coffers of what we might call the Scaling Bank of the U.S. and make these sums available to companies that will scale their American operations. Such a system would be a daily reminder that while pursuing our company goals, all of us in business have a responsibility to maintain the industrial base on which we depend and the society whose adaptability—and stability—we may have taken for granted.
 Andy Grove, How America Can Create Jobs

Despite all the perks we've been giving to corporate America, it's not at all clear that the private sector will ever again create enough decent jobs to support a middle class society in this country. Right now the economy is supposedly growing, but employment isn't. So what is growing? Well, the obscene bonuses and pay packages of corporate America and Wall Street --- the only growth that counts for our financial elites.
We're at a critical point in the jobs crisis. Nearly 30 million of us don't have jobs or have been forced into part-time jobs. It's not like there's no work to do. We have millions and millions of kids to educate. We desperately need to slash our energy use--and with an army of workers, we could weatherize every home and business in the country. Our bridges and roads will take decades to repair. We need to build an entire national system of efficient public transit.
When Wall Street is in trouble, we come to the rescue with trillions in bailouts. We've poured hundreds of billions more into two wars. But when it comes to investing in our people to get needed work done, we can't seem to summon the will or find the cash.
 Les Leopold, Why All the Idiocy about Unemployment?

The consensus, no matter who says it and why, is that American manufacturing industries are no longer of Americans, by Americans, or even for Americans.  It's beyond a worrisome rumor, it's an established fact:  American manufacturing, compared to manufacturing world-wide, fills a niche no bigger than the size of an ant farm box.

Let's face it, the people in charge of keeping Americans working are not just incompetent or oblivious, they're the next best thing to the enemy.  The public sector is beyond just aiding and abetting the private sector, they're right down in the trenches with them.  Such a cacophony from Big Money, from the Right Wing, from  the keepers of the status quo.  Who could blame the people in charge for lending them an ear?

You kidding?  We could!  We should!  A whole lot of us DO!


A vast army of domestic terrorists bamboozled us, flimflammed us, fleeced us and left most of us bound and gagged, yet, incredibly, some truly wacky others are still begging for more.  Millions of real people are out of work, yet there are still millions of people (some of whom also fit into that out-of-work category) who can actually say the words "out-sourcing" and "off-shoring" without gagging or even flinching.  Many of them sip tea while repeating the words they've been brainwashed by the terrorists-in-gray-flannel-suits into saying:  "We don't want no stinkin' government in our lives".

Well, yes--we do.  We want a government that looks like a New Deal, acts like a New Deal, and actually IS a New Deal.  We want a works program.  We want a PWA, a WPA, a CCC.   We want a jumpstart because we're in serious trouble, I mean Trouble, that's Trouble with a capital T.

We need a Harry Hopkins, a powerful social worker for the masses, someone who cares more about people than about bottom lines.  Someone who won't stop talking, no matter who is trying to do the muzzling.  ( I see Elizabeth Warren in that role.)

We need a dedicated labor advocate.  I nominate Robert Reich.  (See above.)

We need an Eleanor Roosevelt, a conscientious, eloquent reformer who can  work with a cabinet bombarded on all sides by naysayers, greed-meisters, and relief-haters.  Michelle Obama could grow into it--she has the brains, the guts, the heart.  And who better than Michelle to convince her husband he needs to be our FDR?

Oh, and by the way:  We need to tax the hell out of the filthy rich and make them pay.  Then we need to spend what they're forced to fork over on social programs and American outlets for gainful employment.

Tax and spend, that's the ticket.  (Note that I can say that without even once gagging or flinching.)   This is an emergency.  Business as usual is not an option when the country is in crisis.  Rapid response is required.  Set up the triage teams and give them their assignments in this order:

1. Jobs
2. Jobs
3. Jobs.

And remind anyone who objects to the methods of care that we're in the midst of an emergency and they need to shut the hell up.

Ramona

Now, About Those Jobs. . .

We have spent the better part of a year locked in a tedious and unenlightening debate over health care while the jobless rate has steadily surged. It’s now at 10.2 percent. Families struggling with job losses, home foreclosures and personal bankruptcies are falling out of the middle class like fruit through the bottom of a rotten basket. The jobless rate for men 16 years old and over is 11.4 percent. For blacks, it’s a back-breaking 15.7 percent.
We need to readjust our focus. We’re worried about Kabul when Detroit has gone down for the count.          Bob Herbert, NYT, 11/10/09

 ____________________________________________________________

Why are we skirting the issue of joblessness these days?  There will be no recovery without jobs. None.  We need to get cracking on that promised jobs creation program.  But first we need to get past the notion that creating multitudes of low-wage jobs accomplishing nothing more than servicing the upper class is going to get us out of this mess.

We need to re-build and re-tool factories and we need to produce our own goods. Without the majority of the population employed again in meaningful, productive work, we might as well resign ourselves to serfdom and the lives our people led pre-Industrial Revolution.

We need to stop pretending that we need those cheap goods from China and other slave-trade countries. For one thing, they're not all cheap.  Have you looked at the price of athletic shoes lately? With the exception of one company, New Balance, they're all made by human beings working long hours for mere pennies outside of the U.S.  Do the prices reflect that?  Would those ridiculous shoes cost a ridiculous $300 instead of the ridiculous $80 they now cost if they were made here?  Of course not.  I defy anyone to show me how a shoe company in the U.S couldn't produce an $80 pair of running shoes without making a profit.

Almost everything we buy in this country is made somewhere else by people who work under unconscionable conditions for embarrassingly paltry wages.  Do the prices reflect that?  Of course not.  Every year the cost of everything rises, no matter where the goods are produced.  Our new refrigerator was make in Mexico.  I haven't had a new refrigerator in 18 years, but if that was a low, low, non-USA made, non-union made price just for me, I'm not impressed.

Food, clothes, shoes, tools, appliances, office goods, computers--you name it.  They could all be made here by people earning decent wages under conditions that celebrate humanity while still keeping the company in the black.  For most mid- to high-end items, the prices couldn't be much worse.

It can be done.  We all know it can.  It must be done.  There will be no prosperity without a middle class, and there will be no substantial middle class unless we go back to MAKING things. We have to go back to making quality goods better than anyone else at a price that American workers can afford.  That used to be our claim to fame.  American-made goods were the best.  American wages were the best.  When we were the leaders in manufacturing, we lived in an era of exceptional prosperity, and nearly everybody benefited.  The Good Life was here in America.

We can do that again, and we can do it without breaking the bank.  But first things first. The Fat Cats need to go on a diet.   The hard part will be convincing them that their present way of life is killing them--along with the rest of us.  Their King Midas approach to economic stability looks good when they're viewing it from their hog-laden banquet tables, but they need a Marley's Ghost to drop in and show them how they're going to look selling apples on the street corner.

We can't go on like this.   Unemployment has surpassed that magic number--a national average of over 10 percent.  All hell was supposed to break loose if that ever happened, but of course it only affects the unemployed, so watching the stock market go up, even in the face of it, shouldn't surprise us.   But could it at least infuriate us?

Health care is important.  Getting us out of two wars is important.  Climate change is important.  But there is nothing more important today than creating the kinds of jobs that will bring this country back.  Let's get over the idea that such a colossal undertaking can be done without initial governmental/taxpayer help.  We need a WPA-like program and it should have started on Obama's first full day in office.  Congress should have been prepared to sign into law a jobs program that exceeded even our wildest dreams.  Every able-bodied unemployed person should have been ready to flex every muscle when the time came and we should, all of us, have been pushing that enormous, expensive project from day one and working toward making it the most efficient, effective project this country has ever seen.

CCC Crew, Senatobia, MS 1938

So let's say we work on getting that done.  Now we need to go after the off-shore "American" companies and give them the bad news.  They're no longer a part of us.  They get what they've wanted, including all the benefits of being a foreign company.  Cheap goods, low wages, tariffs. . .  Enjoy--somewhere else.

So.  If Americans want to build a strong America we have to do it the American way:   Honestly, righteously, willingly working hard.  Together.  For the common good.

Ramona

(Cross-posted at Talking Points Memo here)