OpEdNews.com
The latest job creation figures continue to be one of the worst on record since the days of Herbert Hoover when we had an economy that was a precursor to the Great Depression. George W. should be more aptly referred to as George "Out-of-Work" Bush. Yes, President George O. W. Bush.
It's beyond me why President George O. W. Bush, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Green(back)span, and Treasury Secretary John Snow(Job) can't figure out why our economy is stuck in a rather permanent job recession. Why can't they see that we are teetering on the brink of economic, financial disaster unless they get off their pompous duffs, get rid of the "ideological economics" and do something to correct the situation?
All we get are patronizing platitudes like "We are turning the corner"; or "The economy is stronger than we think", or "I won't be satisfied until everyone who wants to work can find work", or as Secretary Snow(Job) said recently "the $350 billion tax cut gave the economy oxygen". If the economy needs oxygen then it must have emphysema.
Treasury Secretary John Snow (Job), so-called because he specializes in giving people a good snowjob with his slanted spin to the looming economic disaster, also bragged that we had the highest GDP (Gross Domestic Product or the total cost of all goods and services) in history. Of course, with the sky-rocketing price of health care insurance, prescription drugs, gasoline, heating oil, homes inflating at double digit rates, and sky high lumber prices (just to name a few)---what country wouldn't have historically high GDP.
I think what he meant was that the GDP of CEO's of the Fortune 500 (their salaries, bonuses, stock options and golden parachutes) were at an historic high. Or maybe he was referring to Mr. Grasso, former President of the New York Stock Exchange who had a $180 million annual salary and who is now suing the Exchange for $50 million in an ironic twist on what is a "junk and frivolous lawsuit that Bush so often assails. Yes, it was Mr. Grasso's personal GDP that was at an historic high. Whatever !
The solution to our dangerously anemic job growth problem should be daring and different. It should use something rarely used by President Bush---common sense. For a change it shouldn't be something that is political and shouldn't be designed to be a vote getter by appealing to the vested interests of any particular group. It should be a solution that doesn't just repeat the old, tired, worn out solutions of the past that have proven not to work.. And President Bush doesn't need to stand in front of a big banner that says "Jobs and Growth", "Jobs and Growth", "Jobs and Growth" at every campaign stop. We get the idea. Don't make us sick..
I myself know exactly why our economy is not producing any jobs. All one has to do to figure it all out is to be one of the 18 million-plus Americans out of work. It is then that all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place and one can see clearly why the economy can't and won't produce more jobs. One has to be caught in the giant sucking machine (called conservative, right wing, Republican economics) to fully appreciate the absurdity of the economic policy of President Bush and his economic ill-advisors. It is a policy that is sucking the lifeblood out of our economy. I hate to even blame it on Republicans since President Bush has abandoned all pretenses of fiscal responsibility---long the mainstay of Republicans.
These are the reasons that no jobs are being created:
Health care insurance policies are becoming extremely expensive as premiums increase at an inflation rate of 20% a year---year after year. Premiums can easily be between $3000 and $10,000 a year (or higher) depending upon what percentage your employer makes you pay or whether your employer offers group health insurance anymore. Of course, this assumes you are employed. This is a significant amount of money that is going into the golden coffers of the insurance industry, much of which ends up in the bank accounts of a small number of senior level executives in the form of astronomical salaries, stock options, lavish retirement plans, golden parachute benefits, and other corporate perks. It is estimated that $350 billion is spent on paperwork.
The majority of small businesses don't even offer group health insurance to their employees because they can't afford it. Small business entrepreneurs can barely afford health insurance for themselves. I'd love to know what the average small business spends on health insurance for them and their employees. I think we'd all be shocked.
Many small businesses routinely make decisions to lay off some workers so they can continue to provide health insurance to some other employees. Major corporations in the Fortune 500 spend upwards of $2 billion each on health care for employees. Its long been said that General Motors and Ford are really in the employee health care business---they just happen to make cars as an adjunct to providing health care for their workers. Each year health policies become more and more restrictive and at the same time employers keep transferring more of the burden of payment to their employees.
One wonders if in ten years, being a female will be a pre-existing condition, which will exclude any and all problems relating to obstetrics, gynecology and the entire female anatomy. Being a male would consequently exclude any illnesses relating specifically to maleness. Sorry, no more coverage for prostate cancer, erectile dysfunction, or injuries from smashing beer cans against your forehead during football games. In twenty years, just being a human being might be a pre-existing condition, in which case no illnesses, diseases or injuries will be covered and you will send in your premiums and just hope you don't get sick.. This will be legacy of the Bush years----corporate greed and lust at it's slickest.
Over 45 million Americans have no health insurance whatsoever. These are hard working Americans----people holding two jobs just to make ends meet. People working 60 hours a week for a minimum wage of $5.15 an hour. People whose employers don't offer group health insurance of any real value. Americans who work in Wal-Mart, Blockbusters and Dunkin Donuts who get to work by 6AM and work as hard an many CEO's of major corporations, but are stuck at the other end of the ladder and have no health insurance because they can't afford it----working people.
The real number of uninsured Americans has been estimated to be 70 million. This is an economic disaster of major proportions just waiting to happen. It has the potential of being the trigger that can bring our economy down on its knees. The answer: The only answer, which will come sooner or later, is single payer universal health care for all, funded by a partnership of individuals, businesses, local, state and Federal government sources. A health insurance policy equivalent to what the President has, and what members of Congress and the Senate have, should be available to all Americans at a price that even someone on minimum wages can afford easily.
The end result would be hundreds of billions saved on useless insurance company paperwork estimated to cost $350 billion a year; elimination of double guessing of doctors decisions by insurance company clerks; restoration of old-fashioned doctor-patient relationships; hundreds of billions of dollars saved because people would seek treatment sooner and treatment would reduce dramatically the number of days lost from work.. Affordable premiums, minimal deductibles, and reduced co-pays would free up hundreds of billions of dollars for consumers to spend on other areas of our economy, creating enormous job growth in other sectors where "goods and services" are concrete and real.
When I "buy" an X-ray for $100; or "buy" an MRI or CT scan for $2000; or "buy" a blood test for $300; or "pay" $18,000 to have my gall bladder yanked from my abdomen by a surgeon----how many people and how many other consumers am I really helping. Whose really, really getting that money? Healthcare money is money that is generally being transferred from the poor to the rich or from the rich to the richer.
Universal health care would end once and for all the "money orgy" that has overtaken the health care system where doctors, hospitals, clinics, labs, MRI scan businesses, cancer centers, chiropractic and physical therapy centers, pharmaceutical companies, medical device and supply companies, lawyers for injured plaintiffs and lawyers for negligent defendants, all have jumped into the piranha infested waters and are feeding on each other and on millions of innocent, naïve patients in a system of consumer/patient cannibalism---Americans eating Americans for fun, money and profits.
The right to decent health care at an affordable price should be right up their with the right to breathable air, the right to drinkable water, the right to defense from attack by foreign nations, and the right to orderly, civilized, compassionate government policies that promote job growth and promote policies that are progressive rather then regressive in nature. We need new, fresh, inventive, ingenious and forward thinking policies and solutions for the 21st century.
The system we have now is not a system that encourages job growth. It is a system that will destroy job growth.
Prescription drug spending by seniors over 65 and by baby boomers over 50 is taking a significant chunk of what was discretionary spending money and turning it into money spent on mandatory health survival needs---again with double digit inflationary prices every year, year after year.
It is well known that senior citizens routinely make decisions about whether to buy the prescription drugs that can hold their ailments at bay, or to put food on the table and pay the rent. While rent may cost a senior citizen $500 a month, prescription drugs in the form of several little bottles of pills can easily exceed $800 a month (with little or no reimbursement from Medicare or any insurance plan). Seniors routinely cut their medication in half with pill splitters in order to cut corners. (Maybe this is the "corner we are turning that Bush was referring to).
Baby boomers who have been laid off or young people fresh out of college who have not found a job are at significant risk of having to fork out astronomical prices for prescription drugs for which they have no insurance.
This is not a system that encourages job growth. Hundreds of billions of dollars that could be used to buy consumer goods and services----cars, boats, furniture, vacations, clothes, electronic gadgets of all kinds, home appliances, cosmetics, jewelry, homes, condos, education, exercise equipment, etc. etc. is being diverted to astronomically priced health care, which is often of dubious value. 195,000 Americans died from negligent, inept, or mis-diagnosed care as well as from defective and faulty medical devices, equipment, and mis-prescribed and mis-advertised drugs. This is the system that we spend $1.5 trillion dollars per year on.
The Price of Gasoline. With the price of gas having doubled to $2 a gallon in several short years, families, young people, vacationers, and commuters are spending double what they were spending just a short while ago. The average three bedroom home owner family, with two children and with three cars might be spending $6000 on gas and home heating expenses rather than $3000 that it was spending four or five years ago. That's a good chunk of money that is no longer available for discretionary spending.
Ever since the energy crisis during the Nixon and Carter administrations that created long gas lines we have done little to change our dependency on foreign oil. A cut off of Middle Eastern oil would cause the world economy to basically collapse. With the Israel , Palestine , and all the Arab states all a hot bed of radicalism and instability we are living on the edge of disaster. All this creates uncertainty, reluctance, and skittishness with businesses when making decisions on whether to invest and expand their business. We have wrangled over what energy policy we should have for the past 30 years as oil reserves become scarcer. Oil will not last forever. We have our heads in the sand.
This is not a system that encourages job growth.
The oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Preserve belongs to the American people. When oil reaches $50 and then $60 a barrel we will need to bite the bullet and go up and get the oil---pure and simple. It's a shame. But better to go to Alaska than be forced to go to Saudi Arabia and take it by force. Environmentalists won't like this idea. However, it will shortly become a matter of national security and survival. We can no longer continue to be held hostage to foreign oil.
If we do need to tap into Alaska however, we, the American people, need to cut the Mobile/Exxon/Shell/Sunoco/British Petroleum oil cartel out of the Alaska oil windfall. It needs to be a NASA style project run and regulated by the Federal Government for the benefit of the American people. The oil doesn't belong to the corporations. It belongs to the people. And we sure as hell pay more taxes than the corporations who busy themselves outsourcing jobs to foreign countries and insourcing immigrants as a cheap and expendable source of labor.
Yes, we can use the oil company's expertise and their services but it should be drilled for with the ultimate goal of plowing any and all profits into projects to develop alternative fuels. It should be a "not for profit" venture designed to bring down the price of oil and to give us some breathing room to develop an automobile engine that will run on alternative fuels or dramatically reduce the use of oil and gas. What the hell do we have a Federal Government and a President for if he isn't going to stick up for the people against the vested, powerful interests of large corporate energy companies.
It's what FDR would have done. It's what Eisenhower would have done. It's what JFK would have done. It will take leadership. It will take commitment. It will take ingenuity. And it will take balls. No one will like this solution. Every special interest out there will fight against it.
President Bush would love to get his hands on the oil in Alaska . Unfortunately, he'd send Ken Lay from Enron and Dick Cheney from (formerly) Halliburton and they'd create another Exxon Valdez disaster and have the price of oil up to $6 a gallon and be laughing and smirking all the way to the bank. My plan obviously won't work until HE is out of office.
It is the best alternative from having to go to war with Saudi Arabia , and then Syria , Niger , Nigeria , Iran , Lebanon , and Libya in order to confiscate all their oil fields or to contain the ensuing conflagration. If we did that we'd also have to re-attack Iraq in order to isolate their oil fields and focus our attention on their pipelines and forget about the liberation of the people, who hate us anyway.
It will actually save over a trillion dollars because it will mean that we will not have had to start World War III in the Middle East after our oil supplies are cut off by terrorist backed revolution throughout the Middle East . We can then spend the money we saved to leave the Alaska Arctic Wildlife Preserve in the exact same condition in which we found it----just as campers do then they leave a campsite. With leadership and commitment anything is possible. This project will cost peanuts compared to the Federal Interstate Highway System or to Boston 's Big Dig or to the annihilation of Western Europe and Japan in World War II. Peanuts---both in costs and in environmental impact, as long as it is built, run, and used for the benefit of the American public by the Federal Government our Government. Why not?
Oil at $60 a barrel and gas at $4 a gallon is not a prescription for job growth. It is a prescription for economic and national disaster. It will adversely affect every single area of our economy. It you grew up during the Nixon and Carter eras and remember the half mile long gas line; the prohibition against driving on Sundays; the alternate number license plate system to ration gas and control the gas lines; the clamor for wood burning fire stoves and kerosene burning space heaters; and the hording of 5 gallon gas containers; that was just a taste of the things we have in store for us.
Its been estimated that the "fear factor" of looming or of imminent terrorism has added $10 to $12 dollars to the price of a barrel of oil.
We still haven't learned our lesson. This is not fantasy or science fiction. This happened, and it is not a prescription for job growth. President George O. W. Bush is doing nothing to solve our problems. His vision is single-minded---to get elected.
The Homeland Security Department needs to be scrapped. I don't know what purpose the Homeland Security Department serves other than to suck billions of dollars out of the economy and waste it on security efforts that enrich a few corporations and well connected individuals. It also sucks billions from State budgets that would otherwise be used for education and other municipal services. It is obviously a boon to any corporation operating in the field of "security". Billions of dollars are pumped into "overtime" for all manner of security personnel. About all the Homeland Security Department does is scare tourists away.
I don't know what purpose it serves to have New York City cops, dressed in scary black S.W.A.T. jumpsuits, carrying machine guns and automatic assault rifles. Next they will be carrying rocket propelled grenades and firing them at terrorists riding around in old, beat up, white pick up trucks with their own machine guns mounted on the back----just like in Baghdad . What have we come to? Are we really going to have a major shoot out on the streets of Manhattan ? If we are, can $100 billion in security expenses stop it?
Unfortunately, the Federal money does not always get distributed in a common sense manner as New York City may get $200 million in Federal money for heightened security at the same time that Wyoming gets $200 million. I think Wyoming is safe for now.
Do you think that twenty years from now we will still be at the "yellow alert" level? Just by having such a public alert level system we have given the terrorists another psychological victory.
9/11 never would have happened if we had just had a policy of locking the cockpit doors. And we could have done that for free.
So now we spend billions of dollars searching every single person who gets on an airplane (even little old, gray-haired, elderly ladies) and at the same time we welcome planeloads of people that have traveled from dangerous, terrorist infested countries with surprisingly little control over what they do when they get here and we loose track of whether or not they ever go back. We welcome them as "students" as they take up valuable spaces in our medical and engineering schools as we turn down life long American born citizens with superior and provable academic credentials.
Who works in the Homeland Security Department? The only three people that I know of are the Director of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge for one. Governor Rowland of Connecticut hired his personal chauffeur (or some other aide) to be the state's Homeland Security Director but then Rowland was run out of office for financial shenanigans in the face of impeachment so I don't know what happened to that Rowland aide.
Oh yes, the Governor of New Jersey---the one who recently resigned due to a gay sexual liaison/infidelity scandal---he appointed his gay buddy from Israel to be his Homeland Security man (with a really generous salary). I really don't know who else works for the Homeland Security Department, or what they do, or where they were working before, but I would imagine it is rife with patronage and nepotism of all kinds.
It would be interesting to compile a list of all the senior level people that have been appointed to senior level State and Federal Homeland Security positions and to determine who they are, why they were appointed, who appointed them, what their salaries are, what the size of their communities is, and what they do. How can we still be at "yellow alert" with all this extra protection?
This is NOT a system designed to promote job growth throughout our economy.
President Bush's $350 billion tax giveback has not created a single job. Does anyone know anyone anywhere in America that was hired as a direct result of this $350 billion tax giveback? I don't. Maybe the IRS had to hire some extra temporary people to process the rebates but that may be the extent of it. Job growth is the worst since Herbert Hoover and the period preceding the Great Depression. Where did the $350 billion go? Americans used it to pay for exorbitant health care premiums, astronomically priced prescription drugs, gasoline and home heating oil that has virtually doubled in price in several short years, and for college tuition for their children that can today cost $25,000 a year.
This is not a system that encourages job growth.
Corporate obsession with productivity gains, quarterly results, short-term profits, and cutting costs at any expense is not a system that encourages job growth. A desktop computer that would have been called a mainframe business computer 20 years ago and would have sold for $100,000 can today be purchased for about $800. Some family have 3 or 4 computers in their household and routinely throw them in the dumpster if they break. With most businesses, large and small, fully automated with price scanners, automatic check out systems, fully computerized manufacturing and inventory systems, where does one turn to increase productivity? Outsourcing. Sending work overseas to foreign countries.
Fifteen years ago outsourcing business meant letting another company in the same town do some of your business work----a company that could specialize and do it cheaper than your business. For years, outsourcing also took the form of actually moving an entire company from New York or Michigan to Georgia or Florida where salaries and business costs were significantly lower. Today outsourcing means sending jobs and employment a bit further---to Mexico, Central America and India where businesses don't have to pay for group health care insurance, Social Security taxes, Medicare taxes, Workers Comp insurance benefits, retirement plan benefits, expenses involving environmental or pollution regulations, or employee safety regulations required by OSHA. And to boot, an employee in India or China will happily work for 50 cents and hour for 60 hours a week.
The cheaper wages that can be found overseas is a small part of the lure to move overseas. It's the lack of having to provide benefits, pay taxes, and the lack of obtrusive environmental safety regulations that is the big lure.
As absurd as it sounds the day is fast approaching where American corporations will be outsourcing formerly decent paying American jobs to terrorist countries. We seem to like to reward our enemies. Sweatshops manufacturing handbags and clothes for Lands Ends as well as customer service call centers for Citicorp will be springing up in places like Iraq , Libya , Gaza , Iran , and North Korea where people will work for a few crumbs of food and the hope of not starving to death. Soon you will see labels that say "Made in Sudan ", "Made in Chad ", "Made in Ethiopia ", "Made in Pakistan " and maybe even "Made in the Lawless Region Somewhere Between Pakistan and Afghanistan by the Taliban". You may open up a leather briefcase that has a small slip of paper in it that says, "Inspected by Osama Bin Laden". Don't laugh. The Fortune 500 isn't laughing. There are CEO's plotting where they can shave a penny off every product they make or service they offer. It's the "wild, wild West" of corporate greed.
We do not have a system that encourages job growth here in America . We have one that holds growth back and actually encourages growth to leave our shores and seek its destiny in other countries. And no one is going to do a damn thing about it until it is too late.
Millions of foreign workers (both legal and illegal) continue to stream into the US every year because we have no realistic, enforceable immigration policy. American corporations love this system---an endless source of cheap labor that will work at minimum wage or below minimum wage with little or no benefits. These millions of foreigners, desperate for work, suck up all the jobs at the bottom of the economic ladder---jobs that would otherwise be a "job safety net" for Americans who were laid off and needed a temporary job. These are the jobs that would otherwise be filled by college students looking for part time year round jobs or summer employment. These are the jobs that might be filled by a spouse looking for a second source of family income. As quick as any of these jobs are created they are sapped up by immigrant workers desperately looking for work.
This is not a system that encourages job growth. It's just spinning our wheels.
With the jobs that can't be outsourced because they require a physical presence of a human being here in the United States, foreign workers are being enticed to come to the good old USA and take a mid-level high paying job here at salary that would otherwise be unacceptable to an American college graduate or to a mid level administrative or managerial worker. There is no stopping it. The corporations love it---talented, well educated, well spoken, compliant workers from India, China and Eastern Europe come to America and eagerly work for American jobs for $25,000 a year in jobs that would have paid $5000 a year in their own country and jobs that would normally fetch $45,000 to a newly college graduated American looking for a first job.
This is not a system for job growth for Americans here in America .
Bankruptcies. I'm not talking about Fortune 500 bankruptcies where smiling CEO's step forward and admit their company is totally screwed up and mis-managed and then proceed to lay off 5000 workers. The corporations then are offered special tax loopholes, Federal help, and legislation geared to bail them out, while the CEO's get salaries of $10 million and golden parachutes worth $20 million. I'm talking about personal bankruptcies by ordinary workers and average Americans. Personal bankruptcies have reached record high levels of 1.6 million a year or more than 6 million bankruptcies in the last for years during the so-called incredible Bush job growth phenomena.
Who are all these people that are declaring bankruptcy---people who have reached the end of the financial merry-go-round. Millions are entrepreneurs who couldn't afford health care costs; workers compensation insurance for their employees; and mandated local, state and Federal taxes. Many were small business owners who took a risk. Others are often divorced, single mothers who got stuck with their spouses debt; students who got in over their head with educational costs in an effort to get through college that can cost $25,000 a year; many of the uninsured that were forced to play the game of "Russian roulette with their health" and landed in the hospital for two weeks and came out with a bill for $150,000.
Once one goes bankrupt our wonderful Credit Information Reporting System which is a system right out of George Orwell's 1984 that tracks every purchase you have ever charged or ever owed---your name is "Mudd" for ten years. It's the next best system (from corporate America 's viewpoint) to cutting off your right hand, branding an X on your forehead with a hot branding iron, and throwing you in debtor's prison for ten years.
The only salvation for the despicableness of this Credit Reporting System is the new wave of "identity thefts" that is plaguing the "Big Brother" system we now have. Identity theft is reaching alarming proportions and within ten years there will be few people left whose credit isn't totally destroyed and a total mess, through no fault of their own. Maybe then they will have to issue everyone in America a new Social Security number along with a new name.
If anything, the current Credit Reporting System should be abolished. Any system that permits individual consumers to receive in the mail more than 5 credit card enticements a week----there is something wrong with it. Credit card companies are the equivalent of modern day loan sharks.
This will be a Godsend because the current Credit Reporting System has the potential to be the precursor to a Federal databank system that can track your every purchase that you make anywhere, anytime, from any store. It will be able to track any doctor you ever visit and keep records on any ailment or any illness you may have experienced. Sounds interesting doesn't it?
Can you imagine going into your local drugstore and buying some throat lozenges for a sore throat and then coming down with cancer of the esophagus one year later? Your insurance company could look in your so called "Credit Report" and claim that you never reported that you bought throat lozenges but its in your credit record, and that you therefore must have had a pre-existing condition and therefore would not be covered for the $200,000 chemotherapy treatment. Don't expect to fight it since George Bush will have then eliminated your right to bring a "frivolous and junk lawsuit" against anyone for any reason. And you thought you were just going to buy some throat lozenges.
This is not science fiction. This is coming, unless America wakes up, and wakes up soon to the perils of the election of George W. Bush for another four years.
And what does Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Green(back)span do. He raises interest rates. He must be nuts. Yes, we do have looming inflationary pressures, but they are in specifically targeted areas like health care insurance, prescription drugs, housing prices (due to historically low interest rates), sky -high lumber prices, gasoline, and now anything that depends on gasoline for transportation. The economy isn't in danger of overheating because of an increase in demand and therefore an increase in prices. It is in danger of collapsing due to trillions of dollars being spent on "things and stuff" that are artificially, astronomically priced to extort hundreds of billions of dollars from the American consumer.
Yes, inflation is going to soar. But 18 million people are out of work and 70 million have no health insurance and 1.6 million just declared bankruptcy. Higher interest rates coupled with higher oil and gas prices, coupled with higher health care and prescription drug prices, coupled with continuing high long term unemployment, coupled with runaway immigration landing on our shores, coupled with college tuition that borders on being unaffordable, coupled with record student loan and consumer credit card debt, coupled with spending half a trillion dollars on the war on terror and the war in Iraq-----is going to make Chicken Little's prediction that the sky is falling come true.
Do any of our leaders truly have brains---or are they all just a bunch of blowhards?
I once heard President Bush say that it was not the job of the Federal Government to "manage the economy". If it isn't, what do we need him for? What do we need a team of Presidential Economic Advisors for? What do we need a Federal Reserve Bank or a U. S. Treasury for?
I wonder who will be blamed. Probably the liberals. Yes, the liberal Democrats did it. Yes, it was Al Gore. He was the guy who got elected anyhow. He received the popular vote. He must have done it. He screwed things up. Yes, the right wingers will claim that President Gore did it----and we will believe them because the TV said so.
Conservative right wingers who have hijacked the Republican Party are right now whooping---Booooosh and Cheatny in 2004 ! ! ! Balls to the wall !! Full speed ahead ! ! Man the life rafts ! White, male, conservative, right wing, Republicans into the lifeboats first ! Damn the women, the children, the unemployed, the uninsured, the bankrupt, the poor, the elderly, the ill, the dying, and the disenfranchised! ! Everyman for himself !
What we really need to do is to put George Bush "Out of Work, and make him truly President George. O.W. Bush.
James Boyne
James Boyne has a number of other articles on opednews.com at the following link
