Angry cries of America's 'outsourced' middle class

The Arizona Republic ^ | 03.09.04 | E.J. Montini

[Beck_isright]

Among those who apparently didn't listen to the 43-year-old unemployed woman whose recorded message was posted online last week by The Republic were Arizona's Jon Kyl and John McCain, along with 24 of their Senate colleagues, all of them collecting fat government paychecks.

[Beck_isright]

"Pissed off people don't usually vote for incumbents."

Try explaining that to the bots...

[SCalGal]

Can you fill us in on the backstory?

She lost her job due to Worldcom and Bernie Ebbers.

Part of why she's having so much trouble finding another job is the foreign outsourcing. And yes, she'd take anything. Interviews are few and far between, and she's an exemplary employee.

[oceanview]

exactly right.

let's see what the administration's position on this is after a few more monthly jobs reports like the last one, and after seeing they are making zero headway in the polls against Kerry.

[GraniteStateConservative]

OPIC, Ex-Im Bank, Office of Special Trade Representative, etc. Your tax dollars at work!

[Beck_isright]

"Why do people adopt facile arguments with no moral compunction?"

Because in an election year, people become politically and morally blind to the real issues by trying to create an aura of perfection around their candidates. The reality is that the reverberations of 9-11 are still being felt and the economy has not improved or recovered dramatically.

[Beck_isright]

"OPIC, Ex-Im Bank, Office of Special Trade Representative, etc. Your tax dollars at work!"

More like "your tax dollars putting Calcutta to work!!!"

[GraniteStateConservative]

Why do people adopt facile arguments with no moral compunction?

You know why.

[raloxk]

"More people have probably starved to death in America than civilians killed in terrorist activities since 9/11.""

People dont starve to death in the USA. If they did, you would see people walking around on the verge of death with bloated bellies. Instead our bellies are blaoted cuz we are the fatest country in the world

[FreedomAvatar]

An idiot? Maybe. But he's part of a growing population of socalled "idiots" who will probably not vote for Bush.

[lelio]

Why do people adopt facile arguments with no moral compunction?

Ah, you're one of them book readers aren't you?

I'll also add in there "Why do people think nothing can go economically wrong in the US under a Republican president?" Its like people drank the kool aid and now accept that offshoring R&D jobs is okay if its replaced with a new WalMart supercenter employing the same amount of people.

All one has to do is look to England's and France's fall from world powers thinking that they can maintain their wealth through offshoring their industries to the new world or to third worlds. This shell game is good for a couple of years but eventually the new economies either realize they're better off without you (the US to England) or just want you the hell out of the country (Vietnam to France).

[Ches]

"let's see what the administration's position on this is after a few more monthly jobs reports like the last one"

Think maybe they're hiding something in those reports? They're late again, something about the computer's broken.

[Beck_isright]

It makes you wonder what the hell Rove & Co. are thinking. It's as if they are dismissing the 20% in the middle completely and counting on the salivating base to carry the day.

[Mike Darancette]

The outsourcing issue is not about replacing an obsolete technology with a better one.

I would submit to you that many of the IT jobs being outsourced are obsolete at the wages they command in this country, else they wouldn't be outsourced.

There is not some "evil" cabal that wants people to starve the but pure economics.

But a good stiff dose of Buchananite/Kerry protectionism could cure that.

[petercooper]

The Facts Show Increase of Jobs Under Bush

Paige McKenzie, NewsMax.com

Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2004

The media and Democrats keep repeating it over and over: "2.3 million jobs lost" since President Bush took office. His could be the worst job record since before World War II, they claim.

One little problem: It's not true.

Not only has there been no net loss of jobs during the Bush administration, there has been a net gain, even with the devastation of 9/11. At least 2.4 million jobs have been created since the president took office, 2 million of those in 2003. The gains more than offset the losses.

While Democrats continue to beat their election-year drums about outsourcing, manufacturing losses, unemployment and slow growth in employment, America’s economy has been steadily creating jobs.

At least 366,000 jobs have been created in the last five months, over 100,000 of those in January, White House press secretary Scott McClellan has noted. And though the eight-month recession “officially” ended in November, economic indicators are surprising economists and pointing toward a take-off in the recovery.

The signs:

The 5.6 percent unemployment rate is the lowest in two years and below the average of the 1980s (7.3 percent) and '90s (5.8 percent), and still continues to drop.

The nation's economic output revealed the strongest quarterly growth in 20 years. The data for the fourth quarter of 2003 show that the civilian labor force rose by 333,000, while the number of unemployed in the labor force dropped by 575,000. Even better, the number of so-called discouraged workers declined in December.

Consumer spending grew between 4 percent and 5 percent last year, and real hourly earnings rose 1.5 percent. Real earnings have risen over the last three years.

Exports doubled to 19 percent in the fourth quarter, compared to less than 9 percent in the third.

The number of American workers is at an all-time high of 138.5 million, a level never before attained in U.S. history.

Jobless claims are 10 percent below the average of the last 25 years and still falling.

Hiring indices are up, even in manufacturing.

Productivity growth is extremely high.

Now the doomsayers are criticizing the validity of the unemployment rate, which at 5.6 percent does not fit their gloomy story.

Faulty Counting

The problem is the areas of biggest job growth are usually not even being counted at all.

Though 75 percent of jobs are created by small companies, according to the Small Business Administration, this sector’s entrepreneurial activity and the jobs it creates are left out by Washington bean counters when calculating official new job numbers.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) does its Payroll Survey by phoning businesses to crunch the number of jobs that have been gained or lost. This is where Democrats grabbed onto their lifeline, the 2.3 million figure. Look only at the Payroll Survey, and there has been a gain of only 522,000 jobs since Bush took office.

But here’s the rub. The Household Survey is used to determine the unemployment rate and accounts for those who are self-employed, and small emerging businesses that might be overlooked by the Payroll Survey. But the number of U.S. firms isn’t static, and the "fixed list" used by the BLS for phoning established businesses does not reflect new entrepreneurial activity.

People are called at home and asked if they have jobs, or if they are in the market for a job. In contrast to the Payroll Survey, the Household Survey shows that 2.4 million jobs have been created so far during Bush's time in office.

As Economy.com writer Haseeb Ahmed recently wrote, "something is amiss in the [Payroll] survey."

Credit Where Credit Is Due

That’s not all. When doomsayers, and media spoiling for a fight in an election year, laughed at Bush’s prediction of 2.6 million new jobs this year, not everyone was scoffing.

Ahmed, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and others hardly batted an eye. Greenspan said it was "probably feasible" the economy would reach the Bush administration's forecast of adding 2.6 million jobs this year, provided growth continues and the productivity rate slows to more typically levels.

"I don't think it's 'Fantasyland,'" Greenspan said.

"I agree with him," said John Ryding, chief market economist at Bear Stearns. "I think that we will create 2.5 million, possibly more, jobs over the balance of the year."

Ahmed is convinced that "the revision patterns of the early-1990s recovery cycle" will be repeated. A total of 1.4 million job gains were revised upward to 2.9 million in the first 21 months after the end of the last recession, just after Bush Sr. was voted out of office.

[oceanview]

well, it depends on what you mean by "the economy". Business activity has recovered for sure, I see it where I work, the data is clear on that. But jobs are the problem, the only sectors creating jobs are service industries, government, and small/mid sized companies who are too small to effectively use foreign labor. Can those groups add jobs faster then large companies can offshore them, those same large companies are also doing their expanding with offshore labor? So far, the answer is no.

[dennisw]

Michael Savage pointed this out three months ago. Bush's handlers have never been in touch with the middle class and now are gambling that this issue is not important. ............



REPUBLICAN LEADERS (the stupid party)WILL IGNORE THIS AT THEIR OWN PERIL

[Beck_isright]

"They're late again, something about the computer's broken."

And the tech support lines in Bombay are giving them bad advice on how to repair them...

[ancient_geezer]

alot of people starve here in the US

They've even got a name for it, ANAREXIA.

And that ain't from being poor, just too nerotic to eat.

[oceanview]

what US job isn't "obsolete by the wages they command", in a world with no trade barriers and hundreds of millions of workers with living standards just above a cardboard box at a garbage dump?

tell us, what do you do for a living?