This issue
will not go away, nor should it. It
seems that rising health care costs will finally get serious attention as
employees and the workforce deal with declining revenue and opportunities. The question is how much worse must it
get before the extremists are wrestled to the floor by moderates who want to
get something positive done. No
more lip service. - KWC Excerpts: Stemming Job
Losses
By David S. Broder, Sunday,
August 31, 2003; Page B07 The economy is getting
better, so the experts say. But this is anything but a joyful Labor Day for the
9 million Americans without jobs or for the businesses that once employed many
of them. As the union-backed Economic
Policy Institute
pointed out in a report last week, "in terms of employment growth, the
current recovery is the worst on record since the Bureau of Labor Statistics
began tracking employment in 1939." Instead of the job
picture improving as economic activity has accelerated, more than 1 million
jobs have disappeared since the recession officially ended. The reason is clear: The manufacturing
sector has hit the skids. The
number of factory workers has declined every month for three years. From July 2000 until last month,
industrial jobs fell from 17.3 million to 14.6 million -- a loss of almost one
job in six. And these were, for
the most part, good jobs, averaging $54,000 a year. It has taken a while
for this problem to penetrate the consciousness of official Washington. Even now, despite the warnings from
both labor and management, many officials seem to think that the economic
recovery underway will itself restore a healthy labor market and bring back the
vanished jobs. Governors, who live closer to the everyday
lives of their constituents, know better. The issue of
industrial job loss was very much on the minds of the state executives who met
in Indianapolis earlier this month.
Indiana's retiring Democratic Gov. Frank O'Bannon briefed his colleagues
on his ambitious plan to stimulate four industrial sectors, with hopes of
creating 200,000 new high-wage jobs.
The plan was whittled down in the Legislature -- and now the jobs issue
dominates the campaign to choose his successor. …To many of them, the
future appears bleak. "The
manufacturing jobs are gone, and they're not coming back," South Carolina
Republican Gov. Mark Sanford said with finality. "Just look at the cost of labor in India." Others think something can be
salvaged. Mitt Romney, the
Republican governor of Massachusetts, said: "Manufacturing has been in
decline in our state for over 10 years now. Most of what can be done in China is already being done
there. We're pursuing the kind of
manufacturing that needs to be done in a high-tech state." But even high-end
manufacturing jobs are facing increased competition, as foreign countries build
up their work force skills. The
National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), for example, noted last week that
"more than a quarter (28 percent) of the U.S.-China trade deficit is now
in computers and electronics, the fastest growing manufacturing industry in the
1990s." …Even free-traders
such as Jasinowski and Ehlers complain that the Chinese enjoy a 40 percent
competitive advantage because they won't let their currency "float"
to a realistic level. But not all the
problems originate abroad.
Jasinowski says regulatory and litigation costs and the ever-rising
expense of health insurance are squeezing domestic producers who cannot raise
their own prices. And government
policies designed to help one set of producers can harm others. Sugar duties have driven candy
manufacturers from the United States into Canada, and Ehlers says the
administration's decision to impose steel tariffs has added to the woes of his
industrial constituents, who are steel consumers. Secretary of Commerce
Don Evans is scheduled to announce a Bush initiative for manufacturing at a Sept. 15 speech in Detroit.
Meanwhile, the Democratic presidential candidates are zeroing in on the
issue. Sen. Joe Lieberman has been
out front in proposing a mix of possible approaches, and Rep. Dick Gephardt has
used the crisis to spotlight his record as a longtime opponent of the
free-trade agreements with Mexico and China. The United States and
its economy have a large stake in international trade -- one that could be lost
if policy takes a turn toward the sort of short-term protectionism embodied in
the steel tariffs. But the wasting
of the manufacturing sector is a large fact of life, far too important to be
ignored in pursuit of some economic theory. It is a problem crying out for a solution. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2464-2003Aug29.html |
- RE: [Futurework] Real solutions not economic theory Karen Watters Cole
- RE: [Futurework] Real solutions not economic theor... Karen Watters Cole
- RE: [Futurework] Real solutions not economic theor... Karen Watters Cole