Across
the political spectrum, politicians are promising that their
plans and policies will create jobs.
Creating
jobs is �job one,� they say. While it�s true that the U.S. unemployment rate has fallen slightly lower
than 9 percent, there are millions of workers collecting
jobless benefits, looking for a job in their field of expertise,
or telling prospective employers that they will take anything
they have.
American
workers are desperate. Nearly 15 million of them are looking
for work and millions more (too difficult to count) are
working far below their experience, education, and knowledge.
Republicans
have no proposals to create jobs. Their decaying idea for
economic recovery is to cut taxes for Corporate America
and the rich, even though we have tried that and it has
not worked. Trickle down economics does not work.
The
Democrats keep telling us that there is �economic recovery.�
Both parties point to a resurgent stock market. The newspapers
and TV business news shows inform us that CEOs are taking
tens of millions of dollars in pay and perks and pensions
and golden parachutes. Once in a while, they tell us what
the unemployment rate is, but they don�t dwell on it and
they don�t come up with any solutions.
Millions
of homes are foreclosed and no one seems to know where the
occupants of those empty homes went. It�s like the end of
�welfare as we know it,� during the Clinton presidency. When welfare was ended, no one seemed to know where
all those people (mostly women and children) went. But they
did disapp ear. Likewise, the jobs of millions of Americans.
When
the factories of 1980 began to disappear, there were some
warnings that, if factory flight continued at the pace at
which it was happening during that decade, we�d be in deep
trouble in the not too distant future. It was a time when
the words �global economy� were uttered and the people did
not seem to know what to make of it.
Yes,
we were told, corporations had the right to do whatever
they wanted with their factories and their businesses. Corporations
were in business to make money. That�s what they said and,
in fact, we were told that, if corporations did not declare
that they were in business to make profits to give to their
shareholders and did not in fact do everything in their
power to make those profits, they could be held responsible.
It was tantamount to a criminal act for them to act in any
other way. There was to be no �social responsibility� injected
into their attitudes about running the corporations.
That
meant corporate CEOs were free to pursue profits wherever
they were to be had and it was alright. The American people
heard it repeated so often that it was acceptable to them,
and when Corporate America and its politicians said that
the biggest profits were to be made by producing things
in other countries, places that had workers who would produce
the goods Americans would buy for a fraction of the wages
that were paid in the U.S. of A. It was just good business.
It
was so good for business that the U.S.
government even gave them tax breaks for taking their factories
to other countries. The profits were enormous, so more and
more companies did the same thing. This new way of doing
business began to empty the American countryside of all
of the factories and shops that made things that the people
bought in American cities. The problem? The workers in all
of those factories that were closed and moved to other countries
were now without jobs and without incomes.
The
slide started in the early 1980s, when workers who earned
$40,000-$60,000 a year were now unemployed and there did
not seem to be any great concern on the part of those in
charge of the economy. After their unemployment ran out,
they continued looking for work that would pay near what
they had been earning when there were factories in America.
In
the end, though, they took any job they could get and the
problem was that we were now in what was called a �service
economy.� And that meant jobs in department stores, bars,
restaurants, hotels, nursing homes and other places where
the pay was slightly above the minimum wage.
Although
some at the time raised the alarm, their voices were drowned
out by the praises sung by politicians and the media, in
chorus, about the amazing benefits of the global economy.
How cheap were the consumer goods that Americans found in
their discount department stores! How cheap were their electronic
goods that allowed them to play games and to keep in touch,
minute by minute, with their friends as they looked for
work. They were all looking for work.
Don�t
worry, young people with college degrees were told, you�ll
find work in your field. But, how many young men and women
with master�s degrees, even doctorates, ended up serving
five-dollar coffees and waiting on tables in trendy restaurants.
They could hardly make enough to pay back their student
loans, let alone start families of their own. So, they kept
working at jobs out of their field of education and expertise.
Youngsters just out of high school still were encouraged
to �get a college degree, so you can get a good job.� Funny
thing about that�it�s getting harder and harder to get a
college degree.
For
the working class, the state university systems were the
answer. They didn�t cost as much for tuition and they provided
a pretty good education. However, all of the workers who
were being paid less than half what they were earning when
there were factories in America were not paying as much
in taxes over a couple of decades, so budgets at the federal,
state, and local level were being choked off. Since the
rich don�t pay taxes, they were not going to make up the
shortfall.
Today,
after years of reductions in faculty and programs, along
with continuing tuition increases, it is becoming harder
for youngsters from working class families to get college
degrees. Trading on those degrees to get a higher-paying
job (in information technology or computer science) is out
for millions, and it�s getting worse. In the meantime, we
can see that the rich and corporations are not paying taxes
and the income gap is getting bigger every year.
For
minority children and those who live in most cities (also
in decline because of our empty-the-country economic �policy�),
it has been near Third World conditions
for many years. The whole country now seems to be moving
in that direction. All the while we are told that things
are improving, but people who say that are looking at the
stock market and CEO compensation, not the condition of
the American family. Economic experts have been saying for
several years that, for the first time in America, the current younger generation may not
be �better off� than their parents.
Unbelievably,
we are told constantly that we are better off, now
that we have a global economy, even though we don�t produce
much of anything. Politicians and pundits are telling us
to this day that �competition� in the world market is good
for us. They never explain how competing with people who
are making anywhere between $5 and $30 a day is good for
us, especially when much of what we buy ends up in landfills.
There
is little or no debate about what kind of country we are
becoming, what kind of people we are. We do not care about
what other people think of us, as we conduct our continual
wars and as we go about degrading our environment. That�s
hubris.
A
few months ago, President Barack Obama was quoted as saying,
�Our top priority right now has to be creating new jobs
and opportunities in a fiercely competitive world.�
Our
first response should be that the U.S.
was a prime mover in the creation of that �fiercely competitive
world� and we did it without a thought to what it would
do to the American people over a few decades. Now we know.
We know it first-hand in the economic turmoil in which most
American workers find themselves.
But
there is no policy to deal with it. There is no debate or
even discussion to begin to try to understand it on a societal
level or a national level. We created the economic conditions
in which we find ourselves, but we�ll never be told that
by the politicians and the business leaders. These are the
people who go through the revolving door between business
and government. They are the insiders and they are the ones
who direct the economy. Corporate America will admit this about as soon as they
will admit they are guilty (without fear of prosecution)
of economic crimes against the people and that the same
people are in charge in both government and corporate boardrooms.
Those
in charge are not telling us the truth about our condition
and without the truth we can�t possibly know how to extricate
ourselves from the mess we�re in.
BlackCommentator.com
Columnist, John Funiciello, is a labor organizer and former
union organizer. His union work started when he became a
local president of The Newspaper Guild in the early 1970s.
He was a reporter for 14 years for newspapers in New York State. In
addition to labor work, he is organizing family farmers
as they struggle to stay on the land under enormous pressure
from factory food producers and land developers. Click here
to contact Mr. Funiciello. |