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.
(slapping forehead) Why do I even bother.
Here, let's put it in very simple terms: Lets say you needed to give 4 apples to a dragon every day to keep him from eating you. But then there was two dragons (population growth), and each needed 4 apples (necessary jobs to keep full employment). Yet you were only given 2 more apples. You may have MORE APPLES, but now you do not have ENOUGH APPLES to keep from being eaten.
Now do you get it? Your assertion that there are MORE APPLES (more jobs) ignores that you do not have ENOUGH APPLES (enough jobs for full employment).
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.
In other words, you ignore what you believe -- you know darn well the population is up, due to the massive influx of illegal immigrants alone -- thought to be 10 million in 2003 -- and the fact that the CDC still asserts that Americans have, for every two people, on average approximately 2.5 children. You know all this, and you ignore it anyways.
This is exactly the head-in-sand outlook that has totally turned me off lately. I don't know if I can wake you up. I do know some lurker out there will get it.
The liberal media says no jobs are being created. The BoLS shows 3 million created. That's the bottom line and I'll continue to repeat it.
In other words, you ignore what you believe
No, I'm not ignoring what I believe. What I believe isn't important to what the BoLS says.
-- you know darn well the population is up, due to the massive influx of illegal immigrants alone -- thought to be 10 million in 2003 -- and the fact that the CDC still asserts that Americans have, for every two people, on average approximately 2.5 children. You know all this, and you ignore it anyways.
I don't know how the population fluctuates over a small period like three years. I'm just posting what I know and that's the numbers from the BoLS.
This is exactly the head-in-sand outlook that has totally turned me off lately. I don't know if I can wake you up. I do know some lurker out there will get it.
Wake me up? lol I cite #s from the BoLS and you think it's the end of the world?
Even though you know the numbers are not sufficient. Therefore, you are a willful liar; lying by omission.
This is what 'our side' has devolved to. This is why this site is not where I come most of the time, any more.
It's positively Clintonian in here lately.
To my other friends: Start at 114. His response at 119. My last attempt at 122. When a man is willfully lying by omission, there is simply nothing more I can do.
Not sufficient? They're right there in the BoLS.
Therefore, you are a willful liar; lying by omission.
What am I omitting? The numbers are in the government record. 3 million created. You're wanting me to assume 10,000,000 illegals came in in 2003 (if I read you right), I think that's crazy.
This is what 'our side' has devolved to. This is why this site is not where I come most of the time, any more.
Good riddance if you're going to namecall like this when all I'm doing is citing government numbers.
It's positively Clintonian in here lately.
With you here it's positively contrarian. lol
To my other friends: Start at 114. His response at 119. My last attempt at 122. When a man is willfully lying by omission, there is simply nothing more I can do.
Lying about what? The government says there are 3 million jobs created. They take away their numbers and I'll quit citing them.
And that was in 2000. It's gone up since then.
And Census shows that Americans are having 2.5 kids still.
But I know all this is pointless. You will only concentrate on one part of the equation, willfully lying by omission about the rest. It's totally pointless. You will continue to lie all over the forum, and there's not a damned thing I can do about it.
It looked like you said 10,000,000 in one year. Regardless, even Greenspan thinks the population growth has slowed.
And Census shows that Americans are having 2.5 kids still. But I know all this is pointless. You will only concentrate on one part of the equation, willfully lying by omission about the rest. It's totally pointless. You will continue to lie all over the forum, and there's not a damned thing I can do about it.
How can I lie when I'm simply repeating government numbers and the BoLS #s show 3 million jobs created. Business surveys show none. You choose to believe the business survey, I choose to believe the BoLS.
Bush ignores this issue at his peril. I've seen the problem. I've seen others caught up in it. I've been caught up in it myself. This IS an issue...and a BIG one. In this Colorado town hundreds and thousands will show up for one available barely above minimum wage job--of almost any kind.
We are not just exporting jobs, we are importing ferners to work for less and throw Americans out of work. We are talking about legalizing illegals, so they can have American jobs. Companies are cutting pay and benefits and raising prices in response to their windfalls, instead of creating jobs like expected.
Even if none of this were true--and this 5.6% unemployment were also really true--it would still be an issue if most of the country believes it to be. And, it is not being addressed at all, either in language or action by the Bush Administration.
The Dems are Hell when they lie. They are even more dangerous when they don't have to. I won't be happy if Kerry wins, but I sure won't share the "surpise" of the obtuse legions here, when they moan and groan about the coming sad day in November. Neither will I ever listen again to them about how to gain control back. They will have had it and lost it due to burying their heads in the sand.
Which still hasn't prevented our balance of trade deficit from growing every year.
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