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The Jobs Crunch
randall_burns writes "Neither major party is accurately describing or combatting the Jobs Crunch that Americans are facing. Bad immigration policy-and bad trade deals are combining to decimate the middle class in America."
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For the first time in my life, within 4 weeks of one another, my sister lost her job, my friend lost his job, and his wife lost her job.
These are NOT good times...although Bush would have us believe otherwise.
The job market in this particular state (Delaware) is completely shot to hell and back. In February of 2002, the local DuPont plant laid off almost half of the entire work-force, including myself. I have been unemployed since then, and those unemployment benefits ran out back in November 2002... not fun. At first, I was a bit picky about my next job, I'll admit; having just lost a $15/hour job (with no college education, which is another rant for another time), I really didn't want to drop down to a McDonalds job due to the obvious decrease in the weekly check. After I realized that finding a similar-paying job wasn't going to happen, I went out to the usual teenie-employers to try my luck... Wal*Mart, Burger King, etc etc. I've been unsuccessful even with these places, and have been since I've started my job-hunting two and a half years ago. For the record, there's nothing about me that would lead someone to not hire me, such as criminal records, disability, race, any of that nonsense. (Obviously, those aren't supposed to matter, but speaking for this state, it does). Wrapping up my sob-story, moving to a new state is out of the question due to personal reasons involving my daughter, so we're stuck here. Always nice to hear Bush on TV saying that the economy is great, hah.
There was a study done recently that showed the people in the worst economic conditions tended to vote republican even though the bad economic conditions were caused by republicans. So places like Montana which have been controlled by republicans for over a decade and still have the some of the lowest wages and worst economies continue to vote for republicans overwhelminly.
The author thought that it was due to cultural issues. I guess if somebody is doing bad you can always blame the homosexuals and the fornicators.
evil is as evil does
Now what he might do about it I dont know
Believe it or not, he's actually got a plan for this. Unlike so many of his other proposals, this one doesn't revolve around ludicrously jacked revenue projections or unfunded mandates. Kerry's plan is to get Congress to pass a tax penalty on companies that send jobs overseas.
Might sound good to some, but the net result will be increased labor costs (or increased tax and tax-compliance costs) for business, which will have the net effect of putting the breaks on an economy which right now is growing at a nice, sustainable rate. Since Kerry's spending plan already calls for nothing less than a wildly unsustainable 12.5% GDP growth per year for 10 years, the additional labor and compliance costs will make little difference in terms of tax revenues and a balanced budget. But it will mean that those businesses are generating less overall economic activity, which will have a net negative effect on domestic job growth.
"Backfire," I think is the word I'm looking for here.
I write in my journal
And this is a good thing.
Restructuring, as the current neo-con governments in Europe call it, is nothing more than:
Are you starting to see a pattern here? The so-called restructuring is nothing but a naked grab for power by the corporations and their toadies. The proof is in the pudding: all European politicians who participated in such 'restructurings' end up with cushy jobs at their friends' megacorps (do you hear me, Wim Kok?).
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
It's easy to blame immigration and say, "Look at all the foreigners coming into our country and stealing all our jobs."
Let me ask you this? Why must we have immigration?
The answer is that you want you society to resemble a pyramid with the youngest at the base of the pyramid, the middle aged in the middle, and the eldest at the top of the pyramid. If your society is not shaped like a pyramid, social programs and the system of collecting taxes completely fall apart.
In order for society to maintain a balance, every woman needs to have on average about three kids. How many kids did your parents have?
How many kids are you going to have?
Because citizens don't have enough kids to fill in the bottom of the pyramid we must have immigration or, we have to re-engineer our social systems and methods of tax collection. Take your pick.
This is why France has the largest muslim population in Europe. Native France citizens didn't have enough kids to support the country. SOo to supplement they had to allow immigration.
This is why Japan is doomed without immigration. Women there are now refusing to marry and having kids later and later (post 35). Pretty soon the population pyramid of Japan will be inverted with the oldest at the top. I predict they will allow immigration soon.
Africa's population has no middle. Only the very young and very old. The middle was wiped out by AIDS.
So that's the long and short of immigration. If you want something different, you have three choices:
1. Have more kids.
2. Change your system of collecting taxes (shift the tax burden higher up the pyramid).
3. Change your system of social programs. Maybe public education is no longer free. Maybe social security vanishes. Lot's of cuts will have to be made since there are fewer older people to pay taxes and usually they pay less.
The sad thing is that our politicians don't explain the social engineering of our country and let everyone jump to their own conclusions. The Repulicans know that if they do not capture the Hispanic/Latino/Mexican vote that they will NEVER win an election again. That is why Bush speaks spanish and was going to open the immigration flood gates to Mexio prior to 9-11. Right now, it's a giant mess and we really need some good social planners to figure out how best to manage our society in the direction that we want it to go.
Does this take the self-employed into account? I read tha article and saw nothing about the self-employed mentioned anywhere in there.
From what I have read from the federal government's figures, once you take the self-employed into account, Bush is creating jobs, not losing them. Since the self-employed are not being taken into account by the "left", I can not trust anything they have to say about avarage salary since they are not taking millions of workers into account.
Now don't take this to mean that I support Bush either. The whole Homeland Security continues to rub me the wrong way. And the federalizing of the airport screeners?!?
As far as outsourcing goes, every company I have personally been involved with that has outsourced to India (5 in the IT arena) have all seen it as a huge failure and pulled it back in-house. 2 where development and 3 were tech support.
I do agree with their take on worker visas. If you want to work and live in America, become a citizen.
The lowering "disposible income" figure is very misleading. This has been torn apart by the "Right" because you look at what is considered "essential" today as compared to 30 years ago. Who doesn't have a washer, a dryer, a television, and a telephone today? Today they count as essential. Decades ago they didn't. Thus, the "cost of living" goes up and the "disposible income" goes down.
Economics is the easiest thing to understand at a systemic level and the hardest thing to actually implement at the individual level. "Economies" do not change, the earning, spending and investing of individuals changes.
But when you get right down to it, you need the American people to keep more of their own money and for them to spend that money buying products from American companies that employ American workers. Those workers need to invest in those American companies and thus increase their personal wealth while giving the companies more capital to expand.
Oh, and those of you blaming the President for the economy need to remember that it is CONGRESS, not the President, who rules the country's taxes and spending. While the President provides the leadership, CONGRESS is to blame. Vote accordingly.
In my opinion (and, since I am not an economist, it is just my opinion), we need to:
- reduce federal spending (make Congress personally responsible for any deficit?).
- lower taxes for those who pay taxes (the lower 50% of the earners in America pay no taxes!).
- streamline the tax system with the Fair Tax. Once you get rid of most of the IRS, you lower federal costs, you lower the costs of businesses and individuals doing their taxes, you make your tax burden directly linked to your spending, you remove ALL tax burden from those living in poverty, and you lower the cost of American goods, thus making them more competitive in the world economy.
- as individuals, buy products from American companies (preferrably made entirely in America if you can still find one).
- phase out social security (the third rail of politics!). This will never happen, but it should. Over 12% of every worker's paycheck goes to retired people. Imagine if half that money went into your personal IRA account that would actually be worth something when you retired! (Also, as a side note, black men have the lowest life expectancy in America. White women have the highest. Statistically, social security takes money from young black men and gives it to old white women!)
- get the government out of the charity business. Let groups like the Red Cross, the United Way, religious charities, etc. do this work and treat people as individuals instead of numbers.
- put the government back on focus to what it MUST do, not what people WANT it to do. The government should not be a wealth redistribution plan. Government should provide the Common Good Required For Existence.
- Without breathable air, drinkable water, and land that can support farming and ranching,