Green Shoots, Red Ink, Black Hole

Slate ^ | June 3, 2009 | Eliot Spitzer

[MontaniSemperLiberi]

It's a terrible mistake to confuse the momentary solvency of the financial sector and the long-term health of our economy.

While we have addressed the credit collapse, we have not begun to tackle the far more daunting, and more significant, structural problems in the economy. Instead of focusing on the green shoots, let's examine the macro data that will determine our national prosperity in the next generation. These data are terrifying.

Start with the job front. Long term, nothing is more fundamental than good jobs to creating the middle-class wealth that must drive the economy. The creation of true middle-class jobs was the great success of our economy from 1950s through the mid-1990s. Consider the job data, in aggregate and by sector, from the past decade. (All data are from the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics.) Unemployment Rate by Industry Year Unemployment rate Manufacturing Jobs (in millions) Serv. Jobs Gov't. Jobs Total Jobs Population 1999 4.3 18.48 102.23 20.09 133 272 2004 5.6 14.3 108.64 21.5 138.38 292 2009 8.9 12.4 113.82 22.54 141.57 305

One-third of our manufacturing jobs have disappeared in a decade! And while population grew 12.1 percent over the decade, jobs grew by only 6.4 percent. The unemployment number, moreover, doesn't count those who are "marginally attached to the labor force," because even though they want to work and are available to do so, they have not sought a job in the past four weeks. In raw numbers, the total number of individuals counted as currently unemployed and those who are marginally attached is a staggering 15.8 million. That is an enormous mountain of job creation to climb.

[MontaniSemperLiberi]

I've seen the comment "Atlas Shrugs" in regards to conservatives giving up on where our country is going. This is the news. Atlas has been shrugging for two decades. He's taken his manufacturing operations overseas through NAFTA and the WTO.

Manufacturing jobs down by a third, population up by 12%. The fix for America is to re-industrialize America.

[the invisib1e hand]

He's taken his manufacturing operations overseas through NAFTA and the WTO.

Because it costs about an eighth of what it costs in the US. Even Dagny Taggert knows a bargain.

[ruination]

That Eliot Spitzer?

[AnotherUnixGeek]

Investment in transformational technology and infrastructure are core national needs. So why not start with a government order for 500,000 electric cars, subject to an RFP two years from now, by which time a true electric car prototype will have been developed? It should be open to any manufacturer, as long as 75 percent of the value of the car is domestically produced.

Total disregard for market demand or technological realities, just a call to support "transformational technology" by government fiat - half a million electric cars to be produced for government storage, since they will not be useful and no government employee will drive them.

[T. Jefferson]

Nice points Eliot, except all of the job losses were caused by democrat policies you hold dearly.

1. Predatory lawsuits.
2. Nazi environmental regulations.
3. Gluttonous unions.

Get rid of those policies, an America can be competitive again. Otherwise, you just an opportunist hypocrite chasing hookers.

[MontaniSemperLiberi]

My opinion is that it’s not labor rates but environmental laws. We import from countries with virtually no environmental laws. It’s almost impossible to compete against that no matter what the exchange rate is or how productive.

[the invisib1e hand]

well, whatever it is, costs are costs.

[Dick Bachert]

[CaptainAmiigaf]

Research the year 1970. Make a list of the largest and STRONGEST Unions, along with the industries they “controlled”.
Now go to last Tuesday, and research the existence, condition and viability of those same unions and industries.
Today’s pathetic American industrial base, exactly parallels the “strength” of the unions.
Companies did not happily “export” jobs..union refusal to heed economics DROVE them offshore.
Add to that impossible environmental laws and the unbearable cost of “lawsuit protection” and ..there we are.
God save the United States of America. Americans won’t.

[Neidermeyer]

100% of the solar electric panels “dear leader” is in love with are manufactured in China ,, they are an environmental catastrophe the way they build them... they can probably be built in a cleaner fashion but with MUCH higher labor and material costs.

[JasonC]

There is nothing magical about a job classified by a pointy headed bureaucrat as "manufacturing", compared to all other jobs.

They don't pay more. They don't create more value. They aren't more virtuous. It is utter balderdash, start to finish.

250 years ago, intellectuals pretended that all value is created by plants growing, and everything else was parasitic on agriculture. That was balderdash, too.

There are many more jobs today than a generation ago and they pay better. By miles.

All this gloom and doom crap is utter horsefeathers.

Yes we are in a recession. Welcome to cyclical capitalism.

The rest is noise and men in washboards screaming that the sky is falling. How can anyone take these morons seriously?

[Toddsterpatriot]

Manufacturing jobs down by a third, population up by 12%.

What about manufacturing output?

[DNME]

With the staggering cost of hiring even a single employee (wages followed by state and federal taxes, employer-matching Social Security contribution, Medicare, workers’ comp, health care, etc., etc., ad nauseum) it’s no surprise unemployment is big and getting bigger.

Pull the plug on the federal government and maybe businesses will hire people again.