Bob Lord

Posted by Bob Lord I read this article by Paul Begala this morning… http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/06/17/paul-begala-middle-class-in-free-fall-from-the-bush-depression.html … and can't get the first paragraph out of my head: I have a wealthy friend who lives in a wealthy neighborhood. One day he was in his front yard, chatting with his next-door neighbor, a Republican, who asked him why … Read more

Posted by Bob Lord I found this nugget somewhat buried in today’s Sunday Review section of the Times:    http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/the-democratic-road-not-taken/ Take a few minutes to read it. Hart explains, far more articulately and insightfully than I could, how the Democratic Party has become entirely result oriented over the course of a few decades, failing to adapt to … Read more

Posted by Bob Lord

I truly believe that by drilling down just a little into the job numbers and put them next to the assault on unions and the increasing concentration of wealth and income in the top one percent, there’s a strong case to be made that we should be embracing socialism instead of demonizing it.

Start with the job numbers. We were fairly close to what is considered full employment during most of Bush’s presidency. Then, in 2008 – 2009, we hemorrhaged jobs. Since then, we’ve had a fairly anemic recovery and seem to be stuck somewhere in the 8% unemployment range, with many more under-employed or having dropped out of the work force entirely. But that’s an entirely distorted picture of the economy’s ability to produce jobs over that same period. From 2001 through 2006, the construction industry was producing a glut of homes and office and retail space. The effect of the construction industry’s hyperactivity during that period, essentially, was to borrow jobs from the future. Think about it. If the construction industry had not over built during the 2001 – 2006 timeframe, there would have been fewer jobs, not only in construction, but in related industries (mortgage banking and finance, to name a few). Quite obviously, there also would not have been a huge loss of jobs in 2008 – 2009. And, without a glut of homes and office and retail space, there would have been more construction activity over the last few years and, hence, more jobs. But we still wouldn’t be at full employment, or even close.

If you adjust for the artificial shifting of today’s jobs to an earlier period caused by the construction bubble, the jobs picture in America would have been far more stable, but would show that for a full decade we have not been producing enough jobs to employ the entire workforce. That’s not an accident and it’s the fault of neither the Democrats nor the Republicans. The hard reality is that technology and mechanization are fantastic for productivity, but they costs jobs — lots of them. Just a few decades ago, a law office needed almost one secretary per attorney. Today, law offices do just fine with one secretary for every three attorneys, and plenty of attorneys (especially younger ones), don’t need a secretary at all. That’s what happens when you replace typewriters with desktop computers and steno pads with dictation equipment and voice recognition software, and regular mail with email. The global economy also is a reality. Yes, our trade and tax laws suck and, yes, we wouldn’t have lost as many jobs to outsourcing if those laws were better conceived, but we still would have lost jobs and the availability of vastly cheaper labor in other parts of the world will continue to cost us jobs.