← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Okiereddust
Thread ID: 9655 | Posts: 7 | Started: 2003-09-09
2003-09-09 14:09 | User Profile
[url=http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2003-09-07-webber_x.htm]USA Today[/url]
Summer came and went ââ¬â and it didn't feel much like summer. There may be a lesson in that, because the recession came and went ââ¬â and this doesn't feel much like a recovery. That's because jobs are still disappearing. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao points to statistics that say the economy grew by 3.1% in the second quarter.
But there are other statistics, gloomier and more telling: The country has lost 3 million jobs over the past three years, 2.5 million of them in manufacturing. One survey found that 18% of American workers reported being laid off in the past three years. And this summer the average length of unemployment jumped to 19 weeks, the highest level in 20 years.
The statistics tell a discouraging story, and that growing sense of discouragement is exactly the point: Beyond the numbers are two critically important groups of American workers whose emotions, beliefs and attitudes will have an enormous influence over the direction of American politics as the presidential election heats up. For President Bush, the key to the intersection of jobs and voting patterns is not women, who lean more toward Democrats. It is men, predominately white, who tend to be in the Republican camp.
Last week, Bush showed that he's serious about helping them by pledging to appoint an assistant secretary of Commerce for manufacturing.
One male group that Bush's election advisers appeared to be most concerned about consists of middle-aged men who have lost middle-income jobs. I'm not talking about the refugees from the dot-com boom, men who a few years ago were making six-figure incomes selling products over the Web but today find themselves barely making ends meet selling khakis at their neighborhood Gap store. The dot-comers have gotten a lot of press coverage, but they're a relatively small minority compared with the men in their mid-50s who feel themselves in deep economic trouble.
Most of these men held down jobs in manufacturing, or in related industries, such as shipping and logistics, where they made good money and had reliable benefits. More than that, these men had a sense of belonging. There was a place for them in the economy and in the future.
Today, these men feel dispossessed. A series of events, some national, some global, have combined to rob them of their future. The dot-com bust and the recession are partly responsible, but so is technological innovation and global competition. Companies have been forced to become more efficient, which suggests that many of these jobs are gone for good.
As a consequence, there's a whole cross-section of middle-aged American men who are angry and bitter. They don't know how their final 10 years in the workforce will play out. Their old jobs are gone. They can't find new ones. And nobody seems to be paying much attention to the problem. They are feeling left out and betrayed.
These middle-aged men are matched by another demographic cadre: Men in their early 20s who don't know where their first years in the workforce are going to take them. In the old days, the script was familiar: They would follow in their fathers' footsteps. They'd get entry-level manufacturing jobs, or, more recently, start out at the bottom in a job that involved computing or technology.
Today, the manufacturing jobs have disappeared and the technology sector is still in recovery. If they're lucky, these young men now can hope for low-level, low-paying jobs in the service sector. They look to get hired as security guards at malls, or find work transporting senior citizens or keeping tabs on needy kids. The future for the young, who are looking for a chance to get started, is just as uncertain as it is for their fathers, who are looking for an opportunity for a comfortable retirement.
Of course, this isn't the first time in the country's history that we've seen such a dramatic shift in the economy. New technology and global competition swept away the textile industry, first from New England, then from the South. The same forces first flattened the old steel industry and then prompted the creation of mini-mills.
More than once in the past whole industries have disappeared, eliminating traditional and comfortable jobs in the process and disturbing our national equilibrium. Most recently, the feeling of economic uncertainty was the core of Bill Clinton's successful campaign in 1992 against the older President Bush. The slogan, "It's the economy, stupid!" was a reminder that a significant part of the American public felt left behind and out of touch.
But this non-recovery recovery is hitting this President Bush at a delicate moment. The two groups that are most angry about their economic situation have been a core constituency of the Republican majority.
White men, particularly those who are at the beginning or near the end of their careers, have gravitated to the Republican message of military muscularity and economic self-reliance. Women, on the other hand, have tended to favor Democrats for their positions on social policies, education, health care and abortion rights.
The first question, as we arrive at the intersection of presidential politics and national economics, is how these two male groups will respond to an economy that seems to exclude them. If they feel that the economy offers them no hope for a decent future, will they think of switching their allegiance?
The second question concerns the willingness and ability of the Bush administration to respond to these groups' economic concerns. In the past, during troubling times of economic transition, the predictable response was a call for new technological innovation to create new opportunities, support for training and education to retrain workers, and direct payments and benefits to give the unemployed time to reorient themselves in the workplace. On occasion, even temporary measures were proposed to curtail the direct impact or global competition.
At the moment, however, the Bush administration seems hemmed in by economics and ideology. A ballooning budget deficit hampers the administration's resources for such a package. Just as important, the administration's conservative philosophy makes serious interventionist moves unlikely. Rather than spur new jobs in manufacturing, this administration's symbolic move is to hire someone in Commerce to keep track of that sector.
As we move into the fall, with an economy that's supposed to be recovering and two critical groups of voters still feeling depressed, these are the questions of political economy that will shape the debate.
The answers will shape the country's future.
Alan M. Webber is founding editor of Fast Company magazine and a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.
[dohtml]Interesting to see how this dovetails with MacDonald's predictions.
Quote:
Given that the continued existence of Judaism (as a politically and culturally powerful group capable of effectively lobbying for their policies) implies that the society will be composed of competing, more or less impermeable groups (as they advocate open immigration and while advocating "National Greatness" tend in practice to be distrustful of any more substantive expression of American cultural unity, such as religious revival), the neoconservative condemnation of multiculturalism must be viewed as lacking in intellectual consistency. The neoconservative prescription for society embraces a particular brand of multiculturalism in which the society as a whole will be culturally fragmented and socially atomistic. These social attributes not only allow Jewish upward mobility, but also are incompatible with the development of highly cohesive, anti-Semitic groups of gentiles; they also are incompatible with group based entitlements and affirmative action programs that would necessarily discriminate against Jews. As Horowitz notes "High levels of cultural fragmentation coupled with the religious option are likely to find relatively benign forms of anti-Semitism coupled with a stable Jewish condition. Presumed Jewish cleverness or brilliance readily emerges under such pluralistic conditions, and such cleverness dissolves with equal suddenness under politically monistic or totalitarian conditions."Jewish neoconservatives readily accept a radically individualistic society in which Jews would be expected to become economically, politically, and culturally dominant while having minimal allegiance to the lower (disproportionately gentile) social classes. **Such a society is likely to result in extreme social pressures as the lower middle classes are placed in an increasingly precarious economic and political situation.** As in the case of the intellectual activity of the Frankfurt School, the Jewish neoconservative prescription for the society as a whole is radically opposed to the strategy for the ingroup. Traditional Judaism, and to a considerable extent contemporary Judaism, obtained its strength not only from its intellectual and entrepreneurial elite but also from the unshakable allegiance of responsible, hard-working, lower status Jews of lesser talent whom they patronized.
Kevin MacDonald, *Culture of Critique*
[/dohtml][url=http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=news_business&Number=864907&page=0&view=&sb=&o=?=1&vc=1&t=-1]Liberty Forum[/url]
2003-09-09 14:41 | User Profile
Today, the manufacturing jobs have disappeared and the technology sector is still in recovery.
Wrong. Those are being sent overseas as well by the plutocrats.
2003-09-09 15:27 | User Profile
Originally posted by Sertorius@Sep 9 2003, 14:41 * > Today, the manufacturing jobs have disappeared and the technology sector is still in recovery.*
Wrong. Those are being sent overseas as well by the plutocrats.**
Well of course, as has been noted on this forum on several threads. Of course its just USA Today. What's interesting is see them squirming around the obvious un-PC red flags - immigration, to a lesser extent outsourcing - as they try to address this issue.
I'm sure the Bush admin and neocon's are watching to see how to follow suite.
2003-09-09 16:27 | User Profile
*Originally posted by Okiereddust@Sep 9 2003, 09:09 * ** These middle-aged men are matched by another demographic cadre: Men in their early 20s who don't know where their first years in the workforce are going to take them. In the old days, the script was familiar: They would follow in their fathers' footsteps. They'd get entry-level manufacturing jobs, or, more recently, start out at the bottom in a job that involved computing or technology.
Today, the manufacturing jobs have disappeared and the technology sector is still in recovery. If they're lucky, these young men now can hope for low-level, low-paying jobs in the service sector. They look to get hired as security guards at malls, or find work transporting senior citizens or keeping tabs on needy kids. The future for the young, who are looking for a chance to get started, is just as uncertain as it is for their fathers, who are looking for an opportunity for a comfortable retirement.
**
'Young White mens, can't find a job? The US Armed Forces are waiting for you now! And dang-darn, Iraq is needn' you boys to reckon their hostilities against us fine Liberators in Uniform, boy!! Economy don't be suckn' in dat der US Army! We's got positions open'n up all over, like whores on Saturday night! You's boys is all qualified too! Now git!!'
(pretty soon, this will be the only choice for our young men, a la North Korea)
2003-09-09 18:35 | User Profile
*Originally posted by xmetalhead@Sep 9 2003, 16:27 * ** 'Young White mens, can't find a job? The US Armed Forces are waiting for you now! **
Maybe this was the whole point all along. We keep forgetting that the Oligarchy is at least three steps ahead of those they bamboozle. So while we kept focusing on such things as dropping incomes and degraded communities, it never occured to us that such things were always good for recruiting foreign legions.
2003-09-09 19:20 | User Profile
Right now the politicians are more afraid of angry dimwitted illegal mestizos and their ethnic brethren always on the side of "their people", than what the dumbed-down pussified disoriented tel-avision/televitz-watching white majority thinks and feels.
2003-09-10 01:14 | User Profile
10 years ago, I thought that Round 2 would start sometime in the middle of the next century; somewhere around 2050 or so.
If this keeps up, we're going to get pushed into it sooner than I thought. Hordes of fairly smart, malleable, overzealous, disenfranchised (God, I hate that word, but it fits-- sorry. I'll try to not use it anymore) white males are going to grow up and find that their country was sold out from under them, and they're going to be very, very angry. If the pendelum of politics here in the US keeps swinging like this, it's going to get out of control. We're being overrun with muds from the south, Jews and Muslims on either coast (who bring their problems with them, thanks) and the Blacks have been dethroned as 'Biggest Minority'.. they're probably going to want the title back. Asians are under-rated. I think they're too quiet.
I might as well just move to Alaska now and prepare for the worst. Try and make a Skellig Michael and maybe save something of what we once were (or is that defeatist?).
Ausonius