Let's talk about job creation!

[EmilyAnne]

How should the Obama administration go about creating jobs?
What are your ideas?
Also, please post any editorials or references to expert opinions on this topic.

[4dsc]

1. While this is a worthy question

the bigger question is where if the long term recovery aka job growth, going to come from in this economy.. Manufacturing? The financial sector?? Housing?? If you cannot see where the long term growth is going to come from then you can see just how bad of shape we are in as a result of 30 years of conservative economic polices..

[EmilyAnne]

2. This is exactly what I think, 4dsc. Sort of what I want to talk about. What to do in the face of

this reality.
I really have no idea.

[eilen]

3. Change our trade agreements

to encourage manufacturing in this country. Yes, be a little protectionist. Just as Japan and India are to imports to their countries. Provide disincentives to the corporate practice of manufacturing overseas and then importing back in to the US. Decrease H1B visas-- make the burden of proof/paperwork that there is no American citizens qualified and willing to take those jobs as onerous as it is for immigrants to apply for green cards.

Make higher education financially viable. Young people should not be looking at a $40,000 and up price tag for engineering programs. Encourage innovation. Allow small startups and small business some major breaks in taxes and mandates. I think we need more local small businesses in all sectors of the economy and less corporate giants. Provide the government option for healthcare to employees of small businesses that employ 500 and below.

Take the right of personhood away from corporations.

Give organized labor back its teeth.
Those are just a few ideas.

[EmilyAnne]

5. Do you think major tax breaks to American corporations that manufacture in the US would be

acceptable? Rather than just disincentives to those who outsource, but also rewards to those who manufacture here and hire here?
Has this been suggested by Obama, as far as you know?


All of your ideas sound really good, by the way.

[RC]

12. They already have major tax breaks.

We need to redo the nations laws to penalize companies the ship the jobs off shore, but leave the corporate head quarters and maybe a token manufacturing plant here. Make it so if they want to ship the jobs overseas, the head quarters goes also. Make management go to where they shipped the jobs to. That should slow down the job loss right there.

[Donnachaidh]

15. How about major FINES for American corporations that ship jobs elsewhere?

GM is investing 1 BILLION in it's Brazil operation, but is crying poverty in the US? What's wrong with this picture?

Hershey no longer makes chocolate in this country. I'm sure the good folks in Pennsylvania would love to see them pay a REAL price for ignoring the *bottom line* of the workers laid off.

Personally, I'd like to see EVERY corporation in this country audited down to it's underwear, so the government has an idea of how they are avoiding paying taxes, while they keep asking for tax cuts.

I wouldn't have problems with retroactive fines for companies that have shut down and shipped off whole divisions of their businesses out of the country. They expect US to buy their goods - but we're not good enough to work for them?

[EmilyAnne]

16. The moved the Peppermint Patty factory from here in PA to Mexico during the primaries.

Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. and some other Teamsters came into the Obama headquarters in Pittsburgh where I was working and threw a fit about it.
I had NO IDEA that Hershey's was already gone.
That is astounding.
I agree completely with everything you say, by the way.

[CTyankee]

7. I think you are right. People still need manufactured stuff.

We still use automobiles, buses, airplanes and bicycles. We could use a helluva lot better trains. I don't know anybody who has given up the use of refrigeration in their kitchens and hot water with which to bathe. We CAN make dishwashers and clothes washers and dryers and air conditioning equipment.

What is keeping us from doing so on a larger scale than we are doing now? A big part of this the cost of health care for workers who build these products. Taking the cost burden of health care for these workers off the companies balance sheets will go a long way to helping us regain our manufacturing base.

Just my 2 cents...

[EmilyAnne]

8. My husband is a designer. He had a meeting with Whirpool last week and was told that they sell 60

million Whirlpool brand appliances per year world wide.
60 million!
Not really relative to this discussion, but still a crazy amount.

Back to the topic, according to my husband, the companies that moved their manufacturing abroad claim that rebuilding their factories here would be impossibly expensive.
I'm certain there is more to it, of course.
Having to pay decent wages, health care, having to respect emissions standards.
It frightens me to think of the extreme concessions may have to be made to get them to come back.

[CTyankee]

9. Despoiling the planet with dirty emissions is not an acceptable outcome, IMO.

Paying decent wages should be an absolute goal and is a good thing, from the tax revenue side of the equation, and surely this can be encouraged by states interested in luring back manufacturing jobs.

It seems to me that if Europeans can make stuff and sell it, so can we...

[EmilyAnne]

10. I completely agree with you. But corporations will have to have major subsidies to get on board

with that, unfortunately.
But, yeah, environmental standards and workers' rights should be untouchable.

[FreakinDJ]

28. It will not take subsidies just "FAIR TRADE Agreements"

The trade agreements currently are so lop-sided in favor of 3rd world manufacture it is mind boggeling.

The Quality is inferior, the products are basically disposable (meaning they will break and be discarded in short order) and at the end of the day when replacement cost is factored in they are more expensive then the American made counter parts.

But by far the Biggest Hurdle is - Steel Production

We don't have the facilities to manufacture the raw goods anymore - Steel, Iron, Aluminum, and Copper. These will take special consideration from the American Government

[ThomWV]

13. The United States is far and away the largest manufacturing nation in the world.

[FreakinDJ]

29. Better "ReCheck" your facts - been exporting whole factories

at the fastest pace ever seen since 2002.

Workforce is laid off, then crews unbolt the machinery from the floor and crate it up for shipment to China

[FreakinDJ]

18. DING DING DING - We have a WINNER Folks

Every other member country of the WTO has found a means to circumvent the Free Trade / Globalisation BullCrap in order to survive.

The 1950s in America, the larges Economic Expansion to date on the planet, was built apon the shoulders of Americans working in the manufacturing sector of this country

[RC]

4. The absolute best way to create jobs is to

get our manufacturing back into this country. That reason alone is why we have such high unemployment. This high unemployment has a negative affect on any recovery from the recession and helped contributed to it. Shipping jobs elsewhere has a ripple effect on the jobs left, causing other jobs to evaporate.
Anything other than getting our manufacturing back is just diddling with the symptoms and will not work in the long run.

[EmilyAnne]

6. I agree with you. I feel that we are a fundamentally different country than we were 30 years ago in

terms of our economic structure.
I wonder how we can bring manufacturing back, or rather create new manufacturing jobs.
What can be done?

[KharmaTrain]

11. It's Up To Us, Not Him...

Any long-term recovery will depend on a strong and robust private sector. Government can and do provide jobs, but in return to the money and needs of their communities. No need to build roads where people aren't living or working. The key here is in the banking sector where re-regulation and reformation is still in dire need. The credit mess has to be addresed...opening up money that creates businesses that create jobs that in-turn generate taxes.

The TARP was a hail mary to prevent the banking system, and with it billions of dollars in personal accounts. The first stimulus (and yes, I thought the last wasn't enough and expect a second package will be needed) will take time to really have an effect, but there needs to be a program now to reinvigorate the private sector. Be it in new green technologies or low cost loans for new businesses inner cities or tax breaks and other incentives, the private sector, esepcially the small business community have been (in the 90s) and will be the catalyst to future job creation and propserity.

[ThomWV]

14. I can think of 1 thing we could do that would create jobs and greatly improve the nation

It is so simple that it could be done with a Federal law of no more than a single paragraph.

By law require that all Federal Agencies spend 100% their R&D contract budgets on prime contracts to domestic educational institutions, who would then be permitted to subcontract out up to 75% of the total value of any individual contract and couple it with free national education up to the Bachelors Degree level and heavily subsidize graduate education.

That would do it. The effects would be felt nearly immediately, the long term effect for the nation would be incalculable.

[glowing]

19. Agreed.. We lag behind other countries because they invest in R&D.

In the US, the company has to pick up the R&D costs, and we all know that much R&D is thrown in the garbage.. its a big waste for a company.. and they have slashed this feature withing their companies every year.. which means we are behind.. which is why the Prius was on the road long before Ford even could figure out how to make a hybrid.. Why because the country invested in research and development. Our universities would be a great place for much R&D to take place in.. and when a company buys out the product design, which they do within the medical field a lot, then it could nicely supplement the cost of education.. making it a free tool.

Another issue, we have a lot of farmers who will not be replaced in the coming years. We must think of creating sustainable farming practices... encourage younger generations to take land and grow food. The big agro farms are killing us.. this is not a sustainable way for the future.

[CTyankee]

22. I'm probably missing something in your equation here, but how does your

idea comport with the discussion about manufacturing jobs? If we agree that somebody has to make say, refrigerators, does everyone making them need a Bachelor's degree? Are we chasing an ideal that might not be so great in the real world? After all, it is my understanding that in Europe if you make the cut intellectually you get into the university and your degree is tuition free. But not everyone makes the cut. So you have a workforce that also consists of people who are makers of goods, not a bad thing at all if their wages are enough to provide a decent income. Couple that with single payer health care and, in some countries, heavily government subsidized day care, you have lifted a big cost burden off the shoulders of every worker, degreed or not.

While I think that the goal of anyone desiring higher education being provided enhanced access is a good think and I would support it, I think we ought to look at that segment of our population who may not wish the foray into academia, and have excellent job training programs as well. These are workers who also deserve our respect and support.

[tomreedtoon]

27. No, there are too many idiots with Bachelor degrees.

That is one of the biggest fallacies pushed by the educational establishment; that everyone should be a college-educated boss who never gets his hands dirty.

We need workers to make things, not more pretentious yuppie MBA's. We need our high schools to turn out people who can use lathes, sewing machines and construction equipment. We need to reinstate auto shop, wood shop, home ec and practical courses to junior high and high schools.

And doing the dance of "subcontracting" education is just another means of creating fraud in the system. It's all very simple. If school boards and educational systems can't do the job, fire them. Get somebody who can; industrial trainers are more efficient than "educational professionals" at imparting knowledge, because they have a goal in mind besides occupying space.

[excess_3]

17. the EPA has helped create lots of job, look at UAW active membership

over the years.


UAW active membership

1.5 million in 1969

472 thousand in 2010

[FreakinDJ]

20. It wasn't the EPA's decision to move overseas

to avoid environmental standards.

It was the United States decision to allow those same to goods to enter the country "Untaxed" after having been manufactured with complete disregard for the planet, and any evironmental standards. As I have said many times over - "We have simply exported our pollution"

[excess_3]

21. bingo. the US EPA creates lots of jobs

but not in the US

do you have some problem
with non-USA-ans having a job?

[FreakinDJ]

23. No matter what we develop – it will be sent OverSeas

To be Manufactured there by thwarting any possible recovery. It took 8 years for them to export the majority of IT jobs – this time it will take even less time to export any new jobs created in America

A Calif. Title 24 style law mandating all commercial properties over 5000 sq ft be required to produce 10% of their energy needs by 2012, and 20% by 2020, using renewable energy (photovoltaic, wind) is doable immediately. Only catch is MultiNational Corporations are already building Photovoltaic Wafer plants in Mexico in anticipation of Obama’a push towards Green Tech / Renewable Energy.

The MultiNational Corps are like Buzzards circling the American economy and American jobs right now, looking to pick off any thing that is left of the American economy

The problem is not the Innovatins in Technology, the workers, the wages, or the environmental laws. The problem is purely the lop-sided WTO "Free Trade" agreements and the way our "Bought-Off" lawmakers apply them here in the United States

[kentuck]

24. One word:

infrastructure.

[FreakinDJ]

25. That is the only thing they cannot export

[tomreedtoon]

26. How about these ideas?

1) Nationalize several industries essential to our country's welfare. We need to make trains and high speed rails, right? Take over the automobile factories and retool them to make rail cars. Take over the rail lines and rebuild them properly, providing work all over the country.

2) Severely tax corporations that outsource. If they continue the practice, deny them the legal protection of the United States government (the so-called "personhood" of corporations). If they go further, nationalize them.

3) Re-establish and enforce anti-trust laws. People have been laid off because of the supposed "economies of scale" presented by megacorporations. It doesn't work. More competition in all fields of business mean more people employed, lower prices and a healthier economy.

4) Because these companies will not give up their ill-gotten gains easily, end the overseas wars and bring our military back home, to force these bastards to surrender what they have stolen from the American people. I like the idea of armed troopers emptying the offices of Goldman Sachs in a surprise raid, and forcing those bastards onto busses bound for prisons. Matter of fact, using body bags on CEO's instead of underpaid soldiers is a far better use of resources.

[Coyote_Bandit]

30. A few things that would help

(1) Trade (tariffs, import limits) and labor (immigration) protection measures similar to those in other developed nations - which are actually enforced;
(2) Tax incentives/penalties for corporations that encourage them not to off shore labor;
(3) Stimulus funds directed toward the creation and development of small business;
(4) Long-term job placement being a factor in determining what if any federal educational funds are available for students at a given educational institution;
(5) Stimulus funds specifically designated for job creation through various public works (no more trickle down job creation voodoo economic shit);
(6) Tax incentives for manufacturing in the US; and
(7) A single payer health care system which would remove health insurance costs from private industry.

These are a few things that immediately come to mind.....