Good Morning Middle America, your King of Simple News is on the air.
U.S. NEWS: Let’s get right down to the problem here; and that would be money. So where does money come from other than inside birthday cards and the few coins that the tooth fairy leaves under the kid’s pillows? Oh, I forgot to include the checks that our brilliant leaders are getting prepared to mail out.
Jobs would seem to be the obvious answer for the source of most income. But history bears out that anything obvious seems to sail right over our politicians heads, but let’s not count on them and start counting on ourselves, our family, and our friends.
So continuing with our thought, if the symptom is that Americans are running out of money and credit, then the problem must be a lack of jobs; more correctly, good jobs.
Our federal government gets nervous when lots of Americans are unemployed as it tends to make reelection a difficult proposition. But the greater problem isn’t unemployment, it is underemployment.
In the fourth quarter of 2007, the U.S. lost 17,000 jobs. That isn’t good, but the details are far worse. There were 27,000 jobs lost in the construction industry, 28,000 job losses in manufacturing and 11,000 jobs lost in the professional and business services companies. That is a total of 66,000 job losses in these three important categories.
So if there were a total of 66,000 jobs lost, where were the 49,000 jobs added that would result in only 17,000 net job losses? Sure, the jobs were gained in government and the low paying service sector.
The number one job in the U.S. is that of a retail sales clerk. Number two is a cashier. There is a tremendous difference between the wages of say, a skilled machinist, master electrician or design engineer and that of a sales clerk or cashier. In other words, all jobs are not created equal.
As we watch the housing sector continue to tumble, the construction sector will experience further losses. Now this next item is difficult for the boys and girls on Wall Street to grasp, but when building slows, the people who make things to build with also become unemployed. Thus, manufacturing suffers.
So what happens to the people who retail the products that are no longer being consumed? Ask Home Depot and Lowes, they know all about it. And if you have read my book and my blog, you knew all about it the beginning of last year.
Shall we continue down the list? What happens when people are laid off work, begin losing their homes and cars, and see no job in sight? Do they eat out more often and shop for the sport of it? Do they travel and stay in hotels…well some will when they move back to their relative homes, but the point is that the service sector goes on down with ship.
So which presidential candidate has the answer for bringing real jobs back to America? Hillary Clinton, who’s husband passed NAFTA and the WTO and doomed Middle America for all time? John McCain, who admits he knows little about the economy after a lifetime in Congress? Barrack Obama, who seems like a nice guy, but is clueless about job recovery or economics as a whole.
The answer is none of the above. How do you think we arrived at this wreck if not by the leadership of the above mentioned people or others of the same ilk? Start thinking about helping yourself. Quit depending on government; that is the only possible way out.
Take control of your own life and you will be living the good life long after the masses are wondering what the heck happened.
Wake up Middle America, this ones on you.
