Monday, September 19, 2011

Getting Real about Jobs and Debt on C-span (A Revision)


      The President, the Speaker and the congressional Super Committee need to outline job-creating ideas in detail, including how jobs will be created, how many good jobs they will generate and why it will happen.  If they believe a lower tax rate for businesses will generate jobs, it should be because businesses have promised to do so.  We should know how many jobs businesses promise, and have triggers that will tie the rates of tax relief to rates of hiring.    If businesses have made such promises, there should be a time-frame for hiring to begin.  
     Also, there must be the realization that businesses are not the only ones who need "certainty."  Governments also need certainty, and workers need it because they are also consumers.  Workers should consider how certainty might be increased  by sharing either work time or wages during periods when workers  might otherwise be fired.  This would require that workers save more of their earnings during good times, while keeping their spending under control, so they can manage their financial needs, with the help of those savings, during tough times when either their work time or wages must be shared with fellow workers.
      In this uncompromising political climate, all discussions and decisions about jobs and debt should be made on C-Span, where there is a requirement that each position be justified , explained how it will work, has evidence cited from history when such strategies worked in a similar economic environment and has the corroboration of experts.  The fact that  the Super Committee is six Democrats and six Republicans--and not one member of each party--assumes a diversity of expressed opinions in an environment where members of one party may agree with positions of the other party and party members may disagree with each other..
     Our economy always has been consumer driven,  and some Americans have become wealthy because others spent too much, while saving less than they should have.  People whose salaries for years were stagnated and reduced in buying power were enticed to buy homes they could not afford, and which tough times eventually rendered them unable to keep.
     Those who enriched themselves off the middle class no longer have a thriving middle class that can buy more than it can afford, and continue to promote their prosperity.  These wealth-seekers now seek to punish former spenders--who made them rich--for not having saved enough to finance their own retirement and health care needs.   Many Americans are not only unemployed, underemployed, and underpaid; they are being threatening with denial of access to Social Security, Medicare and pensions, which they have helped fund.  
      But there were no suggestions by politicians, during good times, that the middle class save more so they could finance more of their financial and health-care needs after retirement, and businesses certainly weren't advising consumers to spend less.  Unfortunately, those who have improved their financial conditions by taking advantage of an overspending middle class,--which unwisely sought a way of life their incomes would not afford--now punish their benefactors for doing so.     
     Consumers placed their own future retirements at risk by overspending and enhancing business profits.  But businesses now require "certainty" before they will use part of those profits to return the favor to consumers by providing them with jobs.   But how can there be that kind of certainty when fewer consumers are employed, and more of those who are working are saving more because they fear becoming unemployed.
     Discussions of the Obama's plan must raise relevant questions of businesses,  workers, and government in terms of their responsibilities in the American economy.  Businesses, consumers, governments and workers are a team.  And if they are to be a winning team, they must decide how they best work together to become a winner.  How they will achieve that should be discussed on C-Span.
     Workers have invested in businesses with their time and labor and by consuming their goods and services.  Now it is time for businesses to use part of those profits to invest in workers by hiring.  Businesses are waiting for a kind of certainty that only existed in the past only because there were spending  consumers who were "certain" about their employment.  The business world has always been the main engine of job creation.  Job creation breeds profits, and if the goods and services are worth having, working consumers will pay for them.  
     Unfortunately, large companies are having to choose between hiring more American workers and having lower profits for share holders, or hiring more workers abroad, where the labor is cheaper, and having higher profits for investors.  Which is better is not easily answered because many of those profits help finance workers pensions and supplement their retirement incomes in the form of dividends.  Certainly, some investors are entitled to greater financial benefits than others based on the amounts of money invested.  
     But how should that aspect of wealth-distribution be related to the need for an economy to provide employment for all Americans who want to work?  Can maximum wealth generation and maximum job-creation coexist?  The question, which certainly defies an exact answer is:  what combination of American and foreign employment does most good for all Americans and for capitalism in the American economy.. 
     President Obama must chart out a vision for the future of America, as a place where all American feel secure, have no fear of becoming prey, nor feeling any need to prey on fellow Americans.  It must grow out of realization by government, business and workers how they must cooperate to maximize the efficiency of the American economy.
     He must force Republicans to submit their own vision of America, and let the people decide which vision they prefer so they can elect people they can trust to pursue their preference.  If there is common ground in the visions, that's great; voters, therefore, can decide which candidates they trust more to compromise when compromise necessary.  
     Even as each party makes cases for its own ideological preferences, there must be a recognition that the people on the other side of the ideological divide are also Americans, who think they are right--and might be.
    
Ronald C. Spooner
Email:  rcspoon@earthlink.net
Blog:  ronaldcspooner.blogspot.com
    

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