Where Will the New Jobs Come From?

[cbayer]

My father's weekly column.

While there are signs that the recession may be waning, it is not for the unemployed, those who have lost and are losing their homes, the medically uninsured, and millions of part-time workers. Bondholders are being paid off at 100% of par. The stock index has barreled through the twelve thousand mark, and the cash drawers of most corporations are overflowing. Thus those at the top have gotten even more, and most of the rest of us have been left out. There is an ever-widening gulf between Wall Street and Main Street.

Indications are that the job market will recover very slowly. The February employment report showed that we generated just enough jobs to hold even. Given even the modest rate of our population growth, we are falling behind almost every month. As I indicated last week, it is a fantasy to hope that the manufacturing jobs that were lost in the last decade will be coming back. We may find a slow increase in our manufacturing sector, but once jobs are shipped overseas or the workers considered redundant, the jobs are gone. And there is no sense in training the unemployed for jobs that won’t again exist.

My optimism lies in the vital creative energy of the American people. The hope is that we will discover and then market products and services that are as yet undreamed about. Instead of lamenting about what is lost and attempting to restore that which is gone forever, we need people who will look into the future and generate new answers to the world’s emerging needs. My crystal ball is no clearer than yours, and I have no idea about what may be produced. I only know that Americans and American ingenuity will discover and produce what tomorrow’s people will need.

Let me repeat what I said last week. When America has been at its best we saw what industries and jobs were coming on line, not those already on the downhill slope. We found oil, and through joint ventures between private industry and government, land was made available for exploration and subsidies awarded this new industry. An “oil depletion allowance” was paid to energy companies by the Federal Government for every barrel produced. We discovered electricity and wired the entire continent, from the Tennessee Valley to the most remote farmhouse—all through joint efforts between government and the private sector. Privately funded railroads were given federal grants for every mile of tracks laid. The federal highway system is exactly that—federal. Nobody in their right mind believed that government investment in these new industries was socialism or a government takeover. Without government participation these dramatic advances would never have happened and we might still be driving our horses over rutted paths to homes lit by candles.

Nobody knows what the future holds, but progress demands a cooperative spirit in which government invests and the private sector produces. Before us lies a marvelous future that can only be thwarted by building a wall between these two vital parts of a generative society.

In 2010 The Sony Corporation produced a startling video which was screened at its annual meeting. Among the items titled “Do You Know” were the following:

· There are more English speakers in China than in any other nation in the world—including the US.

· The twenty-five percent of India’s population with the highest IQs outnumber the entire US population. India has more honor kids than the US has kids.

· The current top ten in-demand jobs today did not exist in 2004.

· We are currently preparing students for jobs that do not yet exist, using technology that has yet to be invented.

In terms of China, India and about 40 other nations, the governments set the goals, produce the educational and developmental resources, and private industry takes advantage of the results and generates the jobs. No sane persons anywhere says that the government needs to stay out of these ventures. The only place you hear that is right here in the United States. If the American empire is already over the top of the hill, the descent into second-class nationhood may be dated from the sounds being made in Congress in wake of the 2010 election.

America is better than that—much better, and when we recover our sensibilities and look around the world, what we need to do will become much clearer.

Charles Bayer

more articles here:

http://www.seniorcorrespondent.com/articles/2011/03/09/a-new-vision-for-america-part-v-challenges-we-must-address.170342

[opihimoimoi]

1. As soon as those BAIT & SWITCH GOPERS get kicked outta office, the jobs will return

[Mister Ed]

2. From Tax Cuts for the Wealthy! Everyone knows that's the source of all job creation.

Sarcastic jokes aside, your father has written a fine and insightful column. I hope it goes viral. K&R.


Edited for spelling.

[jwirr]

3. For a different side of this I just reread an article from James Howard

Kunstler (Synthesis/Regeneration 44 {Fall 2007}): Ten Ways to Prepare for a Post-Oil Society). I do not know where to find it back so it can be posted but it is worth a read.

[MichiganVote]

4. From whatever actuarial software that gives these crooks in DC the numbers their masters want

[WingDinger]

5. Create those new jobs, and they will find how to offshore/automate them too.

What we need are institutional impediments to centralization. Allow small and flexible to compete with large. Part of that answer is to install single payer.

As the soda makers found out, copackers is the only real solution to logistics. So too should the family and entreprenuer shops be bouyed. There is plenty of work here.

Also, force consumer products to be made well and repairable. And have squads of fix it persons. Such that disabled and in every way challenged, can tinker for their bread.

Offer college paid for a stint of several years community service. Consider even lowering the retirement age. Allow those retired and drawing SS to work, and not RUIN their checks.

[jacquelope]

7. Absolutely! +1000! n/t

.

[jacquelope]

6. Those jobs aren't gone forever

They're in China and India. They still exist. We can bring them back.

The jobs of the future are few and far between - look at what we're producing now. A handful of high paying jobs and far more low-paying crap. That's the way of the future.

When you have that many high-IQ kids in India working for dirt-level wages there is no amount of innovation you can ever come up with that will bring jobs here - they can always do it cheaper. That means we lose not only manufacturing and textiles but also research and development - take for instance biotech, it's moving overseas too.

If you believe in free trade your only hope is that America's wages become cheaper than theirs. No other option works.

[txlibdem]

8. TPTB hail the race to the bottom - and we're all suffering from mass Stockholm Syndrome

You nailed it! Free trade is the top 1%'s wet dream: they've got us all scrambling like frantic little chickens, all of us worried we'll lose our jobs. And to keep us on our toes, working harder and harder just to hang on to the meager pay we do get, they move a few thousand jobs overseas on occasion. The psychological warfare is ongoing and we love our torturers for "letting us keep our jobs."

As long as they are in control of the game, you and I will be steadily losing ground a little here and a little there. Can't you feel the American Dream slipping away? We need to remove the political control and economic control from the top and return it to the bottom 90% from whom it was stolen.

[NorthCarolina]

9. A photo tribute to job creation in America.

WELCOME TO THE SERVICE SECTOR!





















Oh, and there's this too:




On edit: How could I have forgotten the leading job creator, the US military. All they need is a few good meat shields.