The April numbers are in and they are adding to the discomfort and fear among working America.
Even though employers added 290,000 jobs to the labor market in April, the official jobless rate moved up to 9.9% average across the country.
America’s businesses need to add on average 135,000 jobs each month just to keep up with population growth. In the months of April, May and June each year, when springtime comes along and graduates leave school these numbers get skewed a lot, even to the point where adding 290,000 jobs is not enough to prevent a 0.2% jump of unemployment.
If we add the crushing fact that 1 out of 5 men between 25 and 54 is officially not working and that a lot of jobs that were once performed by these men will not come back, especially not in fields of construction, outsourced or automated office and factory work and unskilled labor, we are looking at political dilemmas that will turn this nation from capitalistic to a form of socialism.
A lot of the current unemployment is both structural and the result of a natural degression in human behavior exposed to too much luxury. Wall Street Journal last week actually published a story on employment versus unemployment where it said: ” Another option is on the demand side: Force employers to be less efficient so they have to hire more, or limit imports of goods that threaten jobs of less educated, prime-wage men — solutions with unwelcome side effects.” Our way back to full service gas stations and ushers!!!
No excuse nor outrage over this statement however. The lowest common denominator has apparently been accepted as a viable answer to the unemployment issue and now we are all supposed to cater to a government supported mediocrity.
As official representative of the White House’s take on this approach, Obama’s personal adviser Larry Summers said that the government can increase demand for labor in the short run. Spending more public money on infrastructure, he argues, will both strengthen the economy for the future and employ out-of-work construction workers. More of the same insanity that is killing the value of the dollar and is sending the nation off in the wrong direction.
America’s strength lies in innovations.
If America can emphasize and encourage technology, especially in energy, medicine, and computation/communication, that’s salvation of humanity – and not just the U.S. That’s the wave of the future we should invest in. America also has the best food producing technology in the world, which will be needed for the next decades.
But in contrast, if the government focuses on building bridges and roads we don’t really need, with money we don’t really have, just to prolong the myth of creating short term employment, we won’t be any better off. Investing in technological innovation and energy saving is the way to go.
Two Alternative Options
To be fair, two alternative options were included in the article’s line up, whereby one suggested to exchange or eliminate the kind of work that is not in demand, for better skilled workers that are needed, hence improved education. Duh? And the third option tabled brought me to the conclusion that it’s time for me to look at exit opportunities as this option clears the way to arbitrarily tax the winners to subsidize the losers.
If that becomes the case here in the States based on the current political and socio-economic realities, we will have surpassed Europe’s benevolent socialism by light years.