The U.S. cannot "cut" its way out of this crisis.
Instead of trying to figure out how to keep (cut) 4-year-olds out of pre-kindergarten classes, or how to withhold (cut) life-saving treatments from Medicaid recipients, or how to cheat (cut) the elderly out of their Social Security, the nation's leaders should be trying very hard to figure out what to do about the future of the American work force.
Why? Because enormous numbers of workers are in grave danger of being permanently left behind. Partly because of ever more sophisticated and efficient technology, businesses have figured out how to prosper without putting the unemployed back to work in jobs that pay well and offer decent benefits. The result?
Ever more workers, even college grads, are simply no longer needed.
And yet our politicians and most of our economists choose to remain blind to this new reality.
Corporate profits and the stock markets are way up. Businesses are sitting atop mountains of cash. But put people back to work? Forget about it; consumers don't even have enough money to buy the stuff that's already being offered for sale. So why hire more workers to produce still more? Better to continue increasing profits by continuing to trim the payroll -- as the efficiency of new technology continues to improve, simply make do with ever fewer, ever less well-paid and ever harder-working employees (who now fear that they might be the next ones to be laid off).
For American corporations, the action is increasingly elsewhere.
Corporate interests are not the same as those of workers, or
the country as a whole. As Harold
Meyerson put it in The American Prospect: "Our corporations don't need us
anymore. Why not? Because
half their revenues now come from abroad. Their
products, increasingly, come from abroad as well."
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