Staying with economic issues and especially the issue of job creation; Obama needs to grasp the issue of job creating quickly and do something about it quickly, if he is to remain in office after 2012.
Fareed Zakaria points out some interesting facts in the May 30
th issue of TIME; our economy is recovering slowly but with fewer jobs hence high unemployment persists and will persist?
I know economic details to most people are boring and they would rather not get a headache thinking about them or trying to learn economic theory to figure out what is really going on BUT, like it or not, the economy will be the most important factor in our lives for some time to come. It will also play a huge role in politics.
In the past, economic recovery went hand in hand with low unemployment because as business recovered (demand increased) businesses needed more workers to satisfy that demand. Today, we are satisfying the demand with fewer workers; higher productivity with more automation, high technology, etc.
I have been saying that getting a job at Fords, getting paid a lot for doing a menial job with no education requirement, is gone; the good ole’ days are GONE because you can’t compete on a global level paying stupid wages.
BUT I believe that the old principal espoused by the first Henry Ford is still valid today: pay the workers a decent wage so they can buy the product(s) they make. In other words, employment is still the key to a successful economy because a working family has money to buy stuff (creates demand) and pay taxes (lowers deficit) and an unemployed family needs taxpayer handouts so it uses tax dollars instead of paying taxes (increases deficit).
Our economy crashed so fast and the economic landscape changed so fast that we are caught in kind of a bubble. We know what needs to be done for the future as far as employment is concerned: a smarter and better trained workforce, but what do we do with all the unskilled workers that are caught in the bubble, their jobs are in China and Vietnam and they are not coming back… even what to do with skilled laborers in industries like housing and construction where no demand exists.
Many workers who lost jobs have retrained themselves into other fields such as the medical field and I know of quite a few guys that have done that but what about those workers that cannot do that on their own. Some are suggesting a massive retraining program paid for by the government? Train them to do what?
I just returned from a vacation in
Yellowstone National Park. We went in May to beat the summer crowds but you would not believe all the foreign tourists there; they were everywhere so I was surprised to learn that we have no U.S. Tourism Bureau, in fact we have lowered the budget of the
National Park Service which has to close certain areas for lack of funds.
I actually talked to some rangers about the budgetary restraints and they could not believe themselves that the potential for tourism is not being exploited and actual retarded by our stupid government.
Tourists, especially foreign tourists, spend gobs of money so why are we hindering tourism by restricting them access to the U.S. I can understand safety concerns so deal with them and quit blocking a sure way to create American jobs.
I am not saying that we should not curtail our spending as a nation but I also think we can get creative at creating jobs and I think the people in Washington are too wrapped up in playing politics and not thinking how we can get out of this economic mess.
We are at a crucial point in our history where we absolutely need that good American know-how to get us back in the saddle again…start thinking people.
More ideas later…
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