Watched an interesting discussion on the Chris Matthews show in which it was correctly pointed out that Obama made a huge mistake by saying in public that the Republicans wouldn’t play nice with him. It made him look weak and ineffectual.
What he should do, going down the road, is to actively accuse the Republicans of not wanting to play nice with the American people, by ignoring the needs of Americans in order to cater to their rich friends and the business community that supports them for its own financial ends, a community that has abandoned any idea of helping the American working man.
Corporate, after tax, profits were higher in 2010 than at any time in the history of such recordkeeping. Despite this the Republicans keep maxing out the big lie that corporations are holding back on creating employment due to government regulations and potential taxes. Are they kidding? How much is too much?
We want corporations to create employment. That’s a joke, they aren’t even trying. Quite the contrary, they are trying their utmost to reduce employment by any means possible because less money spent on salaries means more profits and higher dividends and as soon as they can develop a serious robot technology, the only people working will be the ones who make the robots. That employment too, will come to an end when the robots learn to make themselves. This is a stupid, shortsighted goal because workers are consumers. Robots don’t buy anything but WD-40. Laborers who make good wages buy all kinds of stuff and unless stuff gets bought corporations don’t sell goods and don’t make money. That means the corporations go broke. OK kids, let’s learn today’s new Super goal: Chapter 11.
Until the day of the robots, the corporations are trying their best to move labor intense work overseas to cheaper labor markets. How do we overcome this trend? We don’t unless big business realizes that by moving the labor force overseas, they are also moving the consumer base overseas. People without jobs can’t buy goods, so screwing labor is also screwing your consumer base. There is a tipping point where the desire for profits undermines the corporation’s ability to sell their product.
There are two ways out of this employment hole. One is we innovate, which is one of the things that put our nation where it is and kept us there until now, but innovation requires education and right now our educational process is going into the dumpster. With no infrastructure work, due to Republican demands to reduce government, our schools are falling apart. With no new hiring for the same reason, we are losing teachers, our most important resource. So unless someone can convince the likes of Cantor, Boehner and Ryan and the Teabaggers that they have to change their philosophy, that avenue of help is blocked.
Democrats can’t make these clowns change their point of view, only Republicans can, by not voting for anyone who doesn’t back a huge stimulus bill that will create construction jobs and reinvigorate our moldering educational system.
The cost of money is almost zero. There will never be a better or a cheaper time for the government to borrow to create work. We did it in WWII and it worked stupendously. It enabled us to create the industrial storm cloud that won the war and then to send our returning GI’s to school so they could become the basis for innovation and the tsunami of industrial expansion that followed it in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s And it got paid back and while it got paid back our country underwent a huge expansion that elevated the level of living of everyone, not just the rich. Yes it needed higher taxes but only Bush/Cheney and their brain dead followers think you can get something for nothing. Look where that theory has gotten us.
This is not the time to be pussyfooting around. We need bold programs to attack huge problems. If the Republicans refuse to go along, and they will, because the last thing they want with an election coming up is for anything to work right for the Democrats, then the president has to call them out in front of the whole country. This isn’t politics. This is citizenship. This is calling a spade a spade. Obama must, in no uncertain terms accuse the Right of exactly what it is doing, selling out the American people so a few rich lice, who always want more, can get their third mansion while the American dream fades into dust.
Right now unemployment statistics indicate a very significant situation about education.
Less than high school diploma 14.3%
High School Grad 9.6%
Some College 8.2%
College Grad 4.3%
Get the picture? Education is the key to employment. That’s true now and it will be even more so in the future as our job demands get more and more complicated. Right now there are jobs that are going begging because the labor pool doesn’t contain qualified, and qualified is the key here, personnel to fill them. We must educate our children. We must also educate our adults to fill the jobs that exist but are now outside their skill level.
There are only so many grunt labor jobs available and right now too many potential job seekers in the pool. This problem could be partly ameliorated if we jump started some of the many infrastructure projects that are now on the table. Roads are decaying, bridges are becoming unsafe, schools are falling apart, I could go on for another paragraph but none of this gets done if we depend on the private sector or if the president doesn’t get up on his hind legs and shake the tree. And that means a hell of a lot more than, “pass this bill!”
That’s the short term. The long term is education and I don’t mean liberal arts. There are already too many bad poets out of work in this country. We need scientists, mathematicians, engineers and physicists; we need computer techs, electronics techs, audio techs; all kinds of technical jobs that don’t need a Masters degree but do need people who are aimed directly at specific technical know how.
And it all costs money, government money. This, for all you know nothing, no government clowns, is why government was invented, this and keeping the gun nuts under control. This is government’s job and anyone who doesn’t realize that we need government to do this job is too stupid to have a say in how the country is run.