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