JOBS: THE BAD
NEWS
·
American manufacturing jobs in 2001:
17,101,000
·
American manufacturing jobs in 2005:
14,283,000
·
[The Economic State Of The Union,
Manufacturing & Technology News Jan. 19,
2006]
·
Number of private sector jobs
created since 2001 excluding those produced
by increased
military spending: -1,160,000
·
Number of American manufacturing jobs lost
since 2001: 2,818,000
[Economic Policy Institute, Sept. 3,
2005; Manufacturing & Technology News, Jan. 19,
2006]
·
Average number of fewer hours per week
parents have to spend with their kids today than 35 years ago:
22Percentage decrease in average
·
American household income since
2000:-3% [National Statistics, PBS Hedrick Smith; US
Census]
BAD NEWS ON
INCOMES:
·
Inflation-adjusted average CEO pay at
depth of recession in 2002:
$7,773,000
·
Average CEO pay as of 2004:
$9,600,000
[Executive Pay, Business Week 4/21/2003; A
Payday For Performance, BusinessWeek
4/18/2005]
·
Increase in productivity for 2005:
+13.5 percent
·
Percentage increase in average American
CEO's compensation since 2002: +24 percent [Business Week,
April 21, 2003; BLS, Labor Productivity and
Costs]
·
Inflation-adjusted median household
income in 2000: $46,058
·
Median household income in 2004:
$44,389
[Historical Income Tables Households, H-6
Table US Census]
·
Decrease in median income from
2000-2004 in White households: $1,066
·
Decrease in median income from
2000-2004 in Hispanic households:
$2,141
·
Decrease in median income from
2000-2004 in Black households: $2,407
[Historical Income
Tables Households, H-6 White, not Hispanic, Black,
and
Hispanic Tables, US
Census]
BAD NEWS: LABOR
ISSUES
·
Total union membership stands at about
16 million workers, or 14% of the workforce.
·
Union membership has been falling
steadily since 1958, when it stood at 35% of the
workforce.
·
The minimum wage is currently $5.15.
Increasing it requires an act of Congress. Some candidates
want to increase it now, and automatically increase it to keep
up with inflation (known as "indexing").
BAD NEWS ON RETIREMENT
SECURITY:
·
Americans working in private sector who
can rely on a defined pension as of 2004: 6
percent
·
Baby Boomers who believe they're very
prepared to meet living expenses of retirement as of 2005: 24
percent [New York Times, Jan. 16, 2006; AllState, Oct. 4,
2005]
THE GOOD NEWS
Jobs are traditionally created
through economic growth but we have entered an era of jobless
growth in which technology and reorganizations are eliminating
good jobs faster than growth is creating them. The new jobs
being created are often low paying, temporary, and without
benefits creating an underlying sense of insecurity throughout
society that deeply stresses the social fabric. Furthermore,
many of the jobs provided by the conventional economy are
based on unsustainable rates of resource extraction and are
therefore temporary in nature.
We must begin to think in terms
of providing people with sustainable livelihoods based on
sustainable production for sustainable markets to support
sustainable lifestyles. By requiring equitable trade,
investing in urgently needed local labor-intensive public
works (infrastructure improvements), creating a new renewable
energy efficiency policy; by fully funding education and
redirecting large bureaucratic and fraudulent health
expenditures toward preventive health care we can reverse this
trend and create millions of new jobs.
FOR CREATING JOBS HERE’S WHAT I
PROPOSE:
·
Reducing taxes on labor. This will make
labor more competitive with energy and capital investment.
(See “Fair Taxes”)
·
Solidarity with unions and workers
fighting the practice of contracting out tasks to part-time
workers in order to avoid paying benefits and to break up
unions.
·
Adopting a reduced-hour (30 hour) work
week as a standard. This could translate into as many as 26
million new jobs.
·
Subsidizing renewable energy sources,
which directly employ 2 to 5 times as many people for every
unit of electricity generated as fossil or nuclear sources yet
are cost competitive. Also, retrofit existing buildings for
energy conservation and build non-polluting, low impact
transportation systems.
·
Supporting small business by reducing
tax, fee and bureaucratic burdens. The majority of new jobs
today are created by small businesses. This would cut their
failure rate and help them create more
jobs.
·
Opposing the trend toward "bundling" of
contracts that minimizes opportunity for small,
minority-owned, and women-owned businesses.
·
Reducing consumption to minimize
outsourcing - the exportation of jobs to other countries -
thus reducing the relative price of using U.S. workers.
