Posted on 11/12/2003 11:33:47 AM PST by Theodore R.
Loss of Jobs in America Paul Craig Roberts
Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2003 Are we being spun on jobs by the White House and the rah-rah Bush media like we are being spun on Iraq? Make up your own mind after considering the following.
Only a few of the 116,000 private sector jobs created in October provide good incomes: 6,000 new positions in legal services and accounting – activities that reflect corporations gearing up to protect their top executives from Sarbanes-Oxley.
The remainder of the 116,000 new jobs consist of temps, retail trade, telephone marketing, and fund raising, administrative and waste services, and private education and health services.
Physicians' offices hired 9,000 people to cope with Medicare and insurance company paperwork. Nursing and residential care facilities hired 5,000, childcare services hired 6,000, and hospitals hired 3,000.
Many of the new jobs do not pay enough to support a family. The temp and retail jobs are 40 percent of the total.
All of the new jobs are in services. None of the new service jobs are capable of producing export earnings to bring balance to our massive trade deficit.
Jobs capable of producing tradable goods and services continue to be lost at a rapid rate. In the last three months, the United States lost 91,000 manufacturing jobs.
Computer jobs have disappeared. In Tampa, San Antonio, Seattle and California, office buildings are closed that a few years ago contained tens of thousands of computer engineers. People who in 2000 were making between $60,000 and $100,000 annually cannot today find jobs.
On Nov. 3, CBS News reported: "U.S. October layoffs surge 125 percent." Layoff announcements from U.S. companies more than doubled in October to 171,874, the highest in a year according to the outplacement firm Challenger Gray & Christmas. In October, the auto industry sacked 28,000 workers and telecommunications companies cut 21,000 jobs.
While the ladders of upward mobility are collapsing, the United States continues to import several million legal and illegal poor immigrants each year. Thirty-five million Mexicans are not needed to pick the California fruit and vegetable crops. There is no economic or social rationale for the United States to permit massive inflows of poor people, whose needs are overwhelming U.S. taxpayers, hospitals and government budgets.
Population experts predict that immigration will boost the U.S. population by 100 million people by mid-century. Imagine what that portends for energy consumption and the environment.
The United States is already a heavy energy importer with a serious trade deficit. The economic development projected for Asia means a huge increase in world energy consumption. Unlike the United States, Asian economies have export surpluses with which to pay their energy bills.
It is possible that the loss of American jobs in tradable goods and services, combined with the importation of massive numbers of poor people, will leave the United States without the means to purchase its energy needs in world markets. When the dollar's value is undermined by budget and trade deficits, energy prices for Americans will explode.
A country that substitutes foreign labor for its own domestic labor via outsourcing, offshore production and Internet hiring, a country that transfers its wealth to foreigners to pay for imports, a country that fills up with welfare-dependent multitudes while it squanders $200 billion in Iraq is a country headed for Third World status.
Some industry experts argue that the United States has lost so much of its core industrial capability that advanced manufacturing skills are disappearing in this country. The United States lacks mass production ability in critical areas of high-tech manufacturing.
The United States assembles parts made elsewhere. Knowledge- and capital-demanding activities, such as charge-coupled devices, industrial robotics, numerically controlled machine tools, laser diodes and carbon fibers, are passing out of U.S. hands.
A service economy has less to export than a manufacturing economy. What will the United States sell abroad to pay for its energy and manufacturing imports?
We are currently paying for our imports by giving up the ownership of our companies, real estate, and corporate and government bonds. Once the United States has spent its wealth, we will have no way to pay for the energy and manufactured goods on which we have become import-dependent.
While the once fabulous U.S. economy erodes, the hapless Bush administration thinks its most important goal is to waste American lives and massive sums of money to force "democracy" on Middle Eastern peoples who do not want it.
COPYRIGHT 2003 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
Dr. Roberts' latest book, "The Tyranny of Good Intentions," has been published by Prima Publishers.
Not the way it looks to me:
Iraq, disregarding what is hoped for it officially, is a sinkhole into which the pirates of Islam are pouring themselves to sacrifice upon the bayonets of soldiers who, unlike most of their other victims, can defend themselves....a conflict of attrition which will soon render the numbers of crazy terrorists below the critical mass of sustainability. Kudos to GW. Democracy, or whatever, is a good goal, but not essential to the mission of protecting the civilized world against those who try to destroy it.
And as for the economy, while the illegals are a drain on welfare, the outsourcing woes--- and the job-loss purported to come of it---are not going to hurt in the long-run; in fact, the lower costs to business and the increased productivity caused therefrom, will be a boon to US workers...who now (and here on this 'conservative' site) clamor for fascism to stem the flow of offshore contracting. [yes Lael, et alia, talkin' 'bout youse]
I see Paul Craig Roberts has joined the sky is falling, whining crowd of malcontents. Damn fool.
Not a new problem, and not one exclusively attributable to illegal immigrants. A person who hires a builder without checking past performance, without confirming insurance, if a fool. The market quickly boots unsavory contractors. Here in Massachusetts, reputable builders have more work than they can handle. Maybe your buddy should move?
My shop tech teacher (trade school...cabinet-building and framing, me) used to say the customer is the boss. Your friend could have adjusted to the demands of the market as required by his clients, but refused. He must be an 'Artiste'.
I hate whining; there's plenty of opportunity that results from every down circumstance in the market. Smart, hard-working folk will get it, and prosper. Whiners demand the gubmint 'do something'.
I know a good harness maker, displaced by the automobile, still looking for work....been 90 years since he had a job.
Note that I put aside the immigrant problem in my nutty last paragraph.
Yet production continues to increase. The second sentence does not support the first.
My Utopia is a confederation of States that preserves freedom for me and my posterity, and a national government that restrains its hammy 'helping hands', and focuses on it's enumerated duties. Thom Jefferson and a bunch of other idealistic nuts wrote about it: check it out, duuuude.
Next?
Yep, there's a lot of gnashing about economic flux on this here site.....and it's heart-breaking. The only solutions offered are to limit freedom, force, require, compel, etc. Poison antidotes.
I thought the harness thing was original....looking at a 1903 city directory last year, I noticed every fifth 'head of household' was a harness-maker.
I do not like that world. And it is a prescription for economic death.
I place my faith in freedom.
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