Where are the jobs going to come from?

[kentuck]

It reminds me of the old song from the '60's, "Where have all the flowers gone?" Now we ask, where have all the jobs gone?

The jobs that we need now have left the country. Now that we need them, we don't have them. They are in China, Vietnam, Malaysia, and other countries in Asia and other parts of the world.

The reality is that we are not going to have enough "green" jobs to put everybody to work that needs a job. We can expect long-term unemployment for the next several years, in my opinion.

What can we do about it? First of all, we should not permit employers in this country to take our jobs overseas and then bring the products back to this country to sell at lower prices. Even with their lower prices, they are making much better profits than before. But that is the way of the new world economy, they say.

At the same time, states cannot afford to pay unemployment insurance for years at a time. There has to be another solution on the table. I believe we need to start a New Deal program much like the WPA or the CCC that FDR initiated in the 1930's. And we need to think about it now.

Our infrastructure is getting old and worn out. We need to rebuild it. Also, we need to start plans on a new rail system and re-open our steel mills. We need to put America to work now - not 4 or 5 years from now.

[meegbear]

1. I'm afraid Paul Krugman is right when he said this will be a 'jobless recovery'

[kentuck]

2. Then it would not be a recovery.

A recovery on Wall St is not a recovery on Main Street.

[OhioChick]

5. Who cares about Main Street? n/t

[MarjorieG]

3. Obama would agree, but between ideology and incredible debt, how to pay?

China is getting tired of floating us.

[nightrain]

4. Rec. Yep. We can't wait to employ people. It's too important.

[Romulox]

6. 1. Military contractor; 2. Insurance adjuster; 3. Prison guard

3 fields with limitless growth!

[Fire1]

7. Some manufacturing but mostly from service oriented

jobs. :shrug:

[pampango]

16. You're probably right. 70-75% of employment in the US, EU and Japan are service

oriented jobs. 20-27% are in manufacturing and 1-2% in agriculture. It would make sense that any recovery in employment would follow a similar pattern.

[Hugabear]

8. Welcome to the new Feudal America

If and when the "jobs" do come back, they'll be low wage jobs servicing the needs of the upper class and wealthy.

[Cleita]

9. I'm wondering what happened to all the talk before the stimulus was passed

about saving the auto industry so they can build bullet trains and all the new jobs to be created by developing alternative fuels? Gone with the wind and solar farms it seems.

[Autumn]

10. Didn't Gates say there would be 22,000 new jobs

in the Army ? :eyes: I personally would rather see that number of jobs added to rebuild our infrastructure.

[Coyote_Bandit]

11. It is really too bad

that the administration hasn't been willing to increase funding to encourage small business creation and development. It is a lost opportunity. Millions of those unemployed folks are going to find themselves tring to create their own jobs and income. But we wouldn't want to undermine corporate Amerikka or encourage folks to think they might possibly have the ability to live independent of these vultures now would we?

[KG]

12. both parties gleefully did the bidding of their corporate master and rubber stamped policies that

aided the exodus of america industrial base. why would anybody think these same political parties have any intention of reversing that?

[corkhead]

13. We've become an economy where all we do is serve fast food to each other

[rhett o rick]

14. To put it bluntly, unless something drastically changes, we are fucked as a country. nm

[Spike89]

15. Can't just flick a switch

The industrial base has been eroding for decades. Even if you "brought the jobs home" there would be no factory in place, or if there was, it would be uncompetitively out of date. For the green jobs, those factories have never existed and the truth is that we're still very much in the R&D phases and not the assembly line phase with most green technologies and products.

However, it has never been true that we don't make things any more. As a country, we have a number of advantages, resources and we still have a strong base of education. Even though other countries are becoming more competitive, the U.S. ranks high with near universal literacy, the best university system, and a few of the best "elite" schools and research facilities.

Solar panels and other semi-sophisticated green technologies are being developed and built in the U.S. right now, but as I mentioned, we're still short of mass production. It takes a tipping point that can be very hard to predict before green technologies go "mainstream". One of the problems is just how much potential is there. For instance, the market for effective, affordable solar panels is outrageous. Do you build a hugely expensive factory today that can churn out millions of today's best panels when you know that odds are excellent that by the time the factory is built, a 10% or more efficient panel will be developed that uses different processes than the one your factory is built for? Of course not.

There will be new jobs. Even in traditional manufacturing, the equations leading to overseas factories as opposed to US-based aren't as fixed and lopsided as most believe. We may never have the thousands of semi-skilled labor jobs that defined the 20th century workplace, but there will always be work that needs to be done and Americans are not quite as feeble and uncompetitive as it seems.

[mopinko]

17. a good healthcare plan will build jobs 2 ways.

first, when "everyone" has healthcare, that will create a large number of related jobs. from hospital cleaning staff to doctors. especially as the boomers get into the age when they need more and more healthcare.
but second, there will be a blossoming of small businesses. lack of healthcare is a major anchor to the small business economy.

and just as an aside, a third thing- manufacturers are moving toward local assembly. if folks remember the republic window story from last winter, that factory was bought by a california manufacturer so that they could build the windows closer to where they are being sold.

:shrug:

[abumbyanyothername]

18. A stab

1) We need to have a national energy policy that strongly encourages home grown energy -- i.e., wind, solar, hydro, tides, currents, etc. This will be necessary even if it adds to the cost of energy to the consumer. Plus a national buildout on the electrical grid (this is going to require national takeover of some current state and regional authority).

2) We can reduce efficiency in agricultural operations and return to a more "hands on" approach to food. This will soak up some excess labor and the idea is more to give people something to do and a place to live that feeds and houses them than to be some big project that offers people a chance to "get ahead" or anything. On the other hand, many people might find more or less subsistence farming and being out of the rat race idyllic.

3) National transportation infrastructure upgrade to be paid for by fees on those using the infrastructure. Focus on efficient travel such as high speed rail, etc.

4) Community based and building programs and businesses. "What can we do here better than anyone else anywhere?"

The first three will be soaking up the labor.

Of course, I still don't see why (absent the capitalist system that we seem dedicated to) the fact that we have an excess of production and an overabundance of labor is a problem. Just give the stuff away.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

19. As the economy stands now, they'll come from the same place the Pie in the Sky comes from.

The problem with your WPA/CCC solution is that the nation is beyond broke. The economy is kept afloat only because China still funds it with loans. And, the only reason China still does that is that they are awash in dollars that they want to keep strong.

But, the Chinese are slowly, and quietly, divesting themselves of dollars by buying up resources around the world.

Gates is trying to re-inflate the economy by, in effect, printing dollars, but that can only go so far.

The economy will only "recover" (what a laughable misnomer that is) when people start spending money. The people will only start spending money when they have jobs or their jobs aren't threatened. And, when they start spending whatever money they scrape together, they won't be buying expensive American products.

Catch-22

[OneBlueSky]

20. in a sane world, from alternative energy, environmental protection, . . .

new hemp-based industries and small farms, etc. . . unfortunately, the world we live in is anything but sane . . .