Waterboy thinks I should get back to work, so here goes...
From the pen of the
Mighty MogamboLater in the article, Mogambo states "
The economics profession has failed America." And ditto the egregious conduct of the schools, the governments and the media (who are supposed to be the public's watchdogs, but are now their willing lapdogs)."
Of which
Dan Rather agrees by saying
"In many ways," said Rather to loud applause, "what we in journalism need is a spine transplant." Rather goes on to opine "
media conglomerates get[ting] bigger" which of course often leads to layoffs. Here in Colorado Springs our local paper recently laid off some more of its force. In fact, despite a supposed 4.5% unemployment rate, there really aren't any jobs to be found. A local temp agency with whom I have a good relationship confided to me that in the past 2 weeks they haven't even seen anything come through. Meaning no new jobs.
Speaking of jobs,
Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan, writes "
Job growth over the last five years is the weakest on record."
Later in the article he writes "
Economists who look beyond political press releases estimate the US unemployment rate to be between 7% and 8.5%." which corroborates the temp agency's experience.
Mr Roberts goes on to inform us that "
Offshore outsourcing and offshore production have left the US awash with unemployment among the highly educated.UC Berkeley, in a 2003 study, estimates that as many as 14.1 million jobs are in danger from outsourcing. Now this is in a country that only has 140 million jobs. But more precisely there are only 100 million actual jobs as 40 million of that total are government and are therefore no in any danger of being outsourced. That means 14% (nearly 1 in 6!) of actual jobs are in danger of being outsourced. Why? Because it is so much cheaper to pay someone in India.
Berkeley gives us an example of the pay differences.
Telephone operator:
- US: 12.57
- India: Under $1
Payroll clerk:
- US: 15.17
- India: 1.50-2.00
Financial Researcher/Analyst:
- US: 33.00-35.00
- India: 6.00-15.00
Where does that leave us? Honestly, it leaves us with nothing. If we don't change what we do we are going to find ourselves destitute and dependent upon the kindness of other countries.
We need to make drastic changes in this country and we need to do it quickly. Of course we need to fix the monetary situation but that has been covered elsewhere. What I propose is that we focus on two areas, research and manufactories. We need to have an edge on the other countries in such a way as they and their people will want to purchase our high tech solutions in areas such as medical, energy, and software as well as low-tech goods that can be exported to willing consumers across the globe.
Countries that produce goods bring in wealth from other countries as well as keep the wealth of that country inside of it for use by its citizens. I am not suggesting that we isolate our economy, rather that we start using the global economy to start creating wealth. America has always been a contender in this global economy, not because of we have cheap wages, but because of our high productivity and our high quality. The American worker out-produces most every other worker across the globe. This is due to our work ethic (which is certainly flagging but I believe can be brought back) and our ability to innovate and implement new technologies and procedures. Ideally we would implement the research at our manufactories to create entirely new products, from simple and cheap to the complex and high-end.
America has long been able to compete against cheaper labor. In fact, for the past century there has been cheaper labor available, all attempting to compete with us not just here on our soil, but also globally. America has excelled in the past and we can again. But to do so is going to require these changes and more. The sooner we start, the less painful it is going to be.