Gil Smart in his column “No future for the blue collar” ridiculing the gist of a Time Magazine article says:
“Now, all those line workers have to become mechanical engineers. Somehow. For the reality is that there’s no way this nation, or any nation, becomes a place where the overwhelming majority of citizens have the college degree and specialized training necessary to compete in a post-industrial economy. It’s just not going to happen, particularly given the fact that as academic requirements rise, so too does the cost of tuition and training. We are basically asking every child in American to take on tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt in order to compete in the economy of the future, and telling them it’s either that or life as a Walmart greeter.not a recipe for societal stability. And yet, check out the nonchalance with which Time tells us that this is our fate and we have no choice but to accept it: ‘Company after company is hiring outside the U.S. and firing in the U.S. — IBM has more workers outside America than in it — and that won’t change.’ “
WATCHDOG:
Does Time Magazine think there are no McDonalds, supermarkets, dry cleaners and taxi drivers in Sweden and Norway? Yet these nations are held up as examples of successful social democracies where all segments of the population enjoy a good and improving standard of living.
Is Time suggesting that our country has grown poorer over the past three decades? In 1980, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the USA was $2.768 trillion. In 2006, it was $5 trillion in inflation adjusted dollars, almost a two – fold increase. Yet the USA population in 1980 was 226,545,805 and population in 2010 was 308,745,538, an increase of only about 36%.So where did much of the money go?
Three places to look for a start:
1) The USA currently spends about 6% more of its GDP for health care than the other advanced industrial nations of the world, yet ranks low in for the quality of health care.
2) The USA spends at least 3% more of its GDP to support well over a thousand military bases around the world and to conduct seemingly endless wars of highly questionable merit and in highly questionable ways.
3) Most of the new wealth went to the top 2% of our population, and especially the top 0.1%. The real incomes of the middle class, about 80% of the population, have remained flat, despite more women going to work and the average worker putting in more hours.
So what are the answers to our problems? They are at least eight-fold:
1) Clearly there is no way that the USA economy can afford to invest in training, modernization of our industry and infrastructure so long as we are wasting 6% of our GDP on inefficient and inadequate health care. We must adopt “Medicare for all” so that everyone has access and our health care costs are brought in line. (Contrary to what some would have us believe, government sponsored health care already covers 52% of our population and the administrative cost is about one-sixth that of the private sector!)
2) We need to stop squandering the 3% of GDP that is more than is needed on the bloated military / industrial complex. We can no longer afford to play the self appointed role of policeman of the world. Rather, we must recognize that we are but one of a number of advanced nations and must share responsibility with the others.
3) Nor should we be lavishing almost the entire increase in national income on the top one percent of our population, and especially the top 0.1 percent.
4) We need to recall that 1776 was about democracy and not laissez faire economics. During the most prosperous times of the latter 20th century income tax rates above a certain level for the very rich came to 80% or higher, not the current 32%
5) The de facto average income tax on the very rich is actually around 17% due to exceptions in the laws written for their benefit and to blatant evasion. We need to reform the tax codes to plug the loopholes and enforce tax laws by increasing and encouraging the understaffed Internal Revenue System.
6) We need to change laws concerning funding of election campaigns so that the people once again have an influence over government rather than well healed special interest groups.
7) We need to stop trying to balance the budget at the sole expense of the needy.
8) These are not conservative of liberal issues. Republicans, Tea Party members, and Democrats should be able to recognize hard facts and get behind needed reforms, for the love of their children, grandchildren and the country.
In a lunch time discussion last week among a noted author, college professors, and successful business persons, the Watchdog asked how our country could prosper so long as we were wasting 6% on Health Care and 3% on excessive military expenditures. No one suggested we could.
