Time to Tackle America's Real Debt - Jobs
As President Obama prepares to take the oath of office, an elite consensus has emerged in Washington: The first term was about reducing unemployment; the second is about tackling the federal debt.
The Economist Magazine put it succinctly: "The crisis and recession are past," it declared. "Mr. Obama's priority now is dealing with the deficit they left behind."
For tens of millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans, there is a different reality, however: The Great Recession is alive and kicking. Rather than buying into the defunct economic ideology that underlies today's budget-cutting fervor, President Obama should focus on restoring workers' dignity and the nation's economy by restoring full employment.
For all the talk about the end of the Great Recession, there are still 12.2 million unemployed people in the United States. This does not include millions more who are working part-time but want and need full-time work. Worse still, this does not include millions of others who are too discouraged to continue looking for work.
Even these grim statistics mask the urgency of the situation. Empirical research over the past four years has shown that people who lose their jobs bear lasting damage to their earnings potential, their mental and physical health and the life opportunities of their children.
The costs are borne not only by individuals and families but cities, regions and the national economy. Years of persistently high unemployment have undermined the base of technical skills on which the nation relies to compete in manufacturing and other sectors globally; these years of high unemployment have reduced consumer demand, causing countless American firms to close.
All told, unemployment is still a national emergency in 2013.
Yet Washington politicians, spurred by an extreme conservative faction, are now pretending that it isn't.
The narrative that has taken hold in the nation's capital -- that America is broke and must sell off its assets and abandon key services for its most vulnerable people -- is based not on facts but fear.
Insider interest groups like the Peterson Institute, intent on reducing taxes for the wealthiest 1% by cutting vital programs including Social Security and Medicare, have been screaming since the early 1990s that investors will soon boycott U.S. bonds unless the nation drastically reduces its spending on the social safety net. These "bond vigilantes", they argue, will force our national borrowing costs -- the interest rates on our bonds -- through the roof, wreaking havoc on the economy.
Yet, tellingly, this never happens. For all the hysteria about budget deficits, there's a simple fact that's evident today: the cost of government borrowing is very low. The federal government can raise funds in the short term with practically no interest; it can borrow funds over ten years for less than two percent. These rates are not simply an economic advantage for the United States: They are a powerful statement that global markets still have great confidence in our national finances.
These low rates are also, crucially, a sign that we should assign urgency where urgency is due: dealing with our debilitating jobs crisis.
This is why I am proposing the "21st Century Full Employment Act" to invest in workers' skills and create public-interest work opportunities for all those who seek them. Such an approach would not only help the nation to overcome its educational challenges, environmental crises, and infrastructure deficits; it would also boost private sector economic growth by injecting desperately needed demand into the economy.
In seeking election in 2008, President Obama invoked a powerful line from Dr. Martin Luther King: "The fierce urgency of now." With regards to jobs, I pray that he continues to feel this urgency today.
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By Goodrich, John at Mar 04, 2013 14:32 PM
Globalization; the race to the bottom , which has created the boom in China and the bust in the U.S. is now even effecting China as demand shrinks and Chinesee jobs are driving "manufacturing on a barge" to even lower-wage countries such as Vietnam.
The U.S. industries are powerless to combat these moves to low wage countries and , in fact, are compelled by competition to do exactly that and as fast as possible or be killed by their competition who are doing this.
Secondly is the conversion of the U.S. economy from manufacturing of goods to financial packaging: making money from money, producing nothing but profits for the big investors and nothing for the working class and poor in the way of jobs.
Third is what almost everyone is ignoring or denying and which I be;l;ieve will be the ultimate killng factor for global capitalism and that is the automation of workplaces ; now limited to dumb machines that weld or assemble things utilizing simple-sophisticated computer programs but which, in the not-too-distant future, will involve AI with human equivalent intelligence enabling the nar-total elimination of human labor b for the much mmore efficient and infinitely cheaper machine workers.
The 3D printer phenomenon is something that, although somewhat different in our preception of frobotics, is just one more example of how machines are, at an exponential rate, changing the labor picture rapidly and permanently away from human workers.
At some inderterminate point , the unemployment levels due entirely to automation will render capitalism unworkable .
At what level of permanent unemployment does any society crumble ?
As said, the vast majority are not seeing this happning right under their noses or are in denial as to the exponential as opposed to the linear rate in which this automation is happening.
As the Borg would say:" Resistance is futile" and in fact, resistance will not only NOT be attempted but capitalism will rush to embrace this technological and very real Borg .
Just as all manufacturers are rushing to outsource their labor to low-wage countries en masse, so too are they even now rushing to automate and utilize machines that can and are working for next-to-nothing and which recoup their purchase price in a year or so.
They MUST automate to survive no less than they have been rushing to the low-wage markets .
It's exactly the same process at work but involving a shift not to another less-paid human , but to a much lless paid machine and PERMANENTLY.
Michael Albert and Noam Chomsky, both of whom have philosophies and future economic systems (Parecon) whose central tenets involve WORKER ownership and democratic operation of the workplace , have both said that they do not see the automation of the workplace as happening to any great degree and certainly not to such an extent that it presents an existential threat to both capitalism and their long-held plans for the future which, again, depend on having humans in the workplace.
In every other instance I would defer to their greater wisdom... but on not on this.
Try Googling "when machines replace humans" and spend a few hours there and also on related searches to get a feel for this certainty.
Do note that it is also necessary to understand the validity of the EXPONENTIAL rather than the LINEAR growth of the technologies such as computing power and AI to see just how fast this is happening. and will happen at an ever increasing rate.
This is not your father's reality.
Comments invited.
Skepticism and absolute denial expected.
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