Posted on 03/10/2004 7:16:16 AM PST by Theodore R.
The jobs crisis and the GOP
Posted: March 10, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
President Bush and his advisers are puzzled and worried.
Economic liftoff took place right on schedule in July when the tax cuts took effect. In the last six months of 2003, the economy blazed along on a growth path of 6 percent. But where are the jobs?
Last week's jobs report, with hundreds of thousands giving up the search for work, and manufacturing jobs disappearing for the 43rd straight month, jolted the White House. What is going on?
They're calling it a jobless recovery. Wrong. Millions of jobs are being created. They're just not being created here in the United States.
The reasons can be traced to these four acronyms: NAFTA, GATT, WTO, PNTR. These are the trade treaties and global institutions that have permitted the historic substitution of foreign labor for American labor, to the enrichment of the transnational companies that look upon the Congress as a wholly owned subsidiary.
Numbers do not lie. In 2003, America exported $1 trillion in goods and services. Almost 10 percent of GDP. Excellent. By the Clinton-Bush I rule – $1 billion in exports creates 20,000 jobs – that $1 trillion worth of exports created 20 million jobs. Exports are good for America.
The problem? We imported $1.5 trillion in goods and services. That created or supported 30 million jobs abroad. But even this understates the case. For foreign workers can be hired at a fraction of the cost of a U.S. worker. Our $1.5 trillion in imports is probably supporting 150,000,000 jobs abroad.
The U.S. trade deficit is the greatest foreign aid and wealth transfer program in history, and our workers are paying for it by the loss to their families of the American Dream.
Consider China. With some $150 billion in imports from China last year, we supported 3 million jobs there. But as China's wages are a tenth of U.S. wages, or less, we are probably talking about 30 million or 40 million jobs in China that are tied to exports to the United States.
For the Bush Republicans, the chickens are coming home to roost.
As Robert Novak reports, North Carolina welcomed Sen. John Edwards home after his unsuccessful campaign as a hero. Why? At the end, Edwards was a fiery adversary of the Bush-Clinton trade deals, a denunciator of NAFTA, a champion of workers. Indeed, just as almost all the Democrats ended up the campaign sounding like Howard Dean on Iraq, on trade they had all begun to sound like Dennis Kucinich.
North Carolina may now be in play in November, says Novak. If so, and Bush loses the Tarheel State, he loses the presidency.
At a weekend conference on immigration and jobs hosted by The American Cause, which this writer chairs, one speaker blurted out that while he voted for Bush in 2000, he would never do so again. The room erupted in applause, though virtually all there were conservatives, and all had once been Goldwater-Nixon-Reagan Republicans.
The crisis of the Bush dynasty is that, like the Bourbons of France, they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. They do not understand that we have entered a new world where the old ways no longer work. They yet recite the old litanies that lost their relevance in the Reagan decade.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, and India abandoned state socialism, and China threw open its doors, a billion workers were thrown onto a global job market to compete against Americans who earn 10 and 20 times their wages.
The trade deals the U.S. government then negotiated, at the behest of U.S. corporations, were not really trade deals at all, but enabling acts. U.S. corporations were told: You can now shut your U.S. factories, shed your U.S. workers, build your new plants in Mexico, China and India, and bring your finished goods back to the United States, free of charge. Go for it!
As Paul Craig Roberts writes, what is happening is not "free trade" in the Adam Smith sense where Portugal makes wine and Britain makes textiles and ships. What is happening is the mass transfer of the "factors of production" from First World countries to Third World countries.
What is happening in the world is what happened in America after World War II, when factories moved to the Sun Belt in search of non-union labor that would work as hard for half of what the high-paid workers in the industrial heartland demanded and got.
Asia is the new Sun Belt, and America is fated to be the "Rust Belt" of the world, as China becomes the factory floor of the global economy and India, through outsourcing, its back office.
Republican free-trade dogma inhibits action to protect U.S. jobs. The GOP is hogtied and hamstrung by its ideology in dealing with the crisis. Its only response is to mutter with Dr. Pangloss that it is all for the best.
The GOP is fortunate its opponent in 2004 is John F. Kerry, who is as clueless as they are on the new world economy that has been designed, and is operating, to loot America of her patrimony.
...as corporations eagerly pump IT jobs overseas as fast as they can sign the paperwork... Better not go into computer fields either.
Yeah, the voting masses make huge mistakes in times of economic change...Hitler...Roosevelt...Carter...Clinton.
Whether they have any real cause to be or whether this is just a natural shift in the market is inmaterial. The reason for it does not matter. Preception is reality to most people. The average joe in this country will hold the President responsible for the job stituation. If they think, and many many do, the outsourcing is a threat they will not vote for a president that supports it. This will be a close election and this is one issue that can win for the rats. We can not afford a rat prez.
I agree and I've never predicted a Bush win. How can I expect the voting population to do the right thing when they voted for Clinton twice? Many voters are too simple-minded to take responsibility for their own future and will blame the government when the government has nothing to do with their situation. In times of recession we get terrible leaders and if the public thinks there is still a recession then we will have a hard time. That's why I'm arguing with you and the other guy here, you are trying to convince everyone there is still a recession and you are not showing any numbers to prove it. Meanwhile my numbers show there isn't a recession. 5.6% unemployment, and 3 million jobs created according to the BoLS. Doesn't look like a recession to me.
You make that kind of money by making other people money. Your superstar will not stroll out of college and into the grateful arms of a corporation willing to give him the reins. Regardless of his style, intellect, and skill, he's going to have to perform first.
That's what I was talking about when I said "setting aside the compensation expectations". He should pursue what he is passionate about; that increases the chances he'll be driven to success. And, with most endeavors, success leads to decent money.
I don't know if the person you are talking about is your son, but if he is, don't fall into the trap many parents do these days. Having spent $200k on an education, it's tough to find out the kid won't make it all back in his first paycheck.
Seems to me that if job loss was that big an issue, then Dick Gephardt would have had a better showing in the primaries. It was his major policy focus and he was endorsed by unions from the beginning, yet he lost badly and dropped out early on.
Well, ya got me there partner, I guess I could "CHOOSE" to live under a bridge and see my kids starve.
This is the estimate Lou Rukeyser felt was closest to reality. There were estimates from $5 trillion to $10 trillion. The WSJ was full of these estimates back in the first half of 2002. It's a big number regardless.
You know, I see you post this about a zillion times.
This is the raw data: January 2001 Employment - 136.0 million, January 2004 Employment - 138.566 million. The actual number is 2.566 million, not 3 million, and you also conveniently leave out that there needs to be 125,000 jobs created a month to keep up with population growth and immigration, according to the very group you cite -- the BoLS.
2.566 over the 3 year sample period = 855,333 jobs a year. 855,333 jobs over 12 months = 71,277 jobs a month.
Yet there needs to be 125,000 jobs a month just to tread water. Therefore, there is a deficit of need of 53,723 jobs a month. Over that 3 years, we are 1.934 million jobs short of what we need TO BREAK EVEN.
I hope you cease and desist in publishing your number without telling the entire story.
I call this an obstacle because our entire economy is based on the silly, childish notion that everyone can be above average. Or, in mathematical terms -- our entire economy is based on the irrational, absurd notion that 100% of the population can be above the 50th percentile in just about any aspect of life.
We have to counter the lies of the liberal media.
This is the raw data: January 2001 Employment - 136.0 million, January 2004 Employment - 138.566 million. The actual number is 2.566 million, not 3 million,...
I rounded off.
...and you also conveniently leave out that there needs to be 125,000 jobs created a month to keep up with population growth and immigration, according to the very group you cite -- the BoLS.
Population growth or not, there are 3 million more jobs now than in 2001 according to the BoLS.
2.566 over the 3 year sample period = 855,333 jobs a year. 855,333 jobs over 12 months = 71,277 jobs a month.
Yet there needs to be 125,000 jobs a month just to tread water. Therefore, there is a deficit of need of 53,723 jobs a month. Over that 3 years, we are 1.934 million jobs short of what we need TO BREAK EVEN. I hope you cease and desist in publishing your number without telling the entire story
Greenspan himself has said that he thinks we've overstated the population growth and some think the population has declined, believe it or not (although I don't believe it). So since we don't really know what the population #s have done over the last 3 years, I go with what I know and I know the BoLS show 3 million jobs created.
Difficult to export roads, bridges, dams and things. Good for you.
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