Fortunately, I found this at the Economic Dreams - Economic Nightmares blog (http://forestpolicy....), which posted large portions of Mr. Webb's discussion on Meet the Press of the economic problems facing this country. John Konop posted a comment containing the following by Paul Craig Roberts:
Nuking the Economy
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTSLast week the Bureau of Labor Statistics re-benchmarked the payroll jobs data back to 2000. Thanks to Charles McMillion of MBG Information Services, I have the adjusted data from January 2001 through January 2006. If you are worried about terrorists, you donGÇÖt know what worry is.
Job growth over the last five years is the weakest on record. The US economy came up more than 7 million jobs short of keeping up with population growth. ThatGÇÖs one good reason for controlling immigration. An economy that cannot keep up with population growth should not be boosting population with heavy rates of legal and illegal immigration.
Over the past five years the US economy experienced a net job loss in goods producing activities. The entire job growth was in service-providing activities--primarily credit intermediation, health care and social assistance, waiters, waitresses and bartenders, and state and local government.
US manufacturing lost 2.9 million jobs, almost 17% of the manufacturing work force. The wipeout is across the board. Not a single manufacturing payroll classification created a single new job.
The declines in some manufacturing sectors have more in common with a country undergoing saturation bombing during war than with a super-economy that is GÇ£the envy of the world.GÇ¥ Communications equipment lost 43% of its workforce. Semiconductors and electronic components lost 37% of its workforce. The workforce in computers and electronic products declined 30%. Electrical equipment and appliances lost 25% of its employees. The workforce in motor vehicles and parts declined 12%. Furniture and related products lost 17% of its jobs. Apparel manufacturers lost almost half of the work force. Employment in textile mills declined 43%. Paper and paper products lost one-fifth of its jobs. The work force in plastics and rubber products declined by 15%. Even manufacturers of beverages and tobacco products experienced a 7% shrinkage in jobs.
The knowledge jobs that were supposed to take the place of lost manufacturing jobs in the globalized GÇ£new economyGÇ¥ never appeared. The information sector lost 17% of its jobs, with the telecommunications work force declining by 25%. Even wholesale and retail trade lost jobs. Despite massive new accounting burdens imposed by Sarbanes-Oxley, accounting and bookkeeping employment shrank by 4%. Computer systems design and related lost 9% of its jobs. Today there are 209,000 fewer managerial and supervisory jobs than 5 years ago.
In five years the US economy only created 70,000 jobs in architecture and engineering, many of which are clerical. Little wonder engineering enrollments are shrinking. There are no jobs for graduates. The talk about engineering shortages is absolute ignorance. There are several hundred thousand American engineers who are unemployed and have been for years. No student wants a degree that is nothing but a ticket to a soup line. Many engineers have written to me that they cannot even get Wal-Mart jobs because their education makes them over-qualified.
Offshore outsourcing and offshore production have left the US awash with unemployment among the highly educated. The low measured rate of unemployment does not include discouraged workers. Labor arbitrage has made the unemployment rate less and less a meaningful indicator. In the past unemployment resulted mainly from turnover in the labor force and recession. Recoveries pulled people back into jobs.
Unemployment benefits were intended to help people over the down time in the cycle when workers were laid off. Today the unemployment is permanent as entire occupations and industries are wiped out by labor arbitrage as corporations replace their American employees with foreign ones.
Economists who look beyond political press releases estimate the US unemployment rate to be between 7% and 8.5%. There are now hundreds of thousands of Americans who will never recover their investment in their university education.
Unless the BLS is falsifying the data or businesses are reporting the opposite of the facts, the US is experiencing a job depression. Most economists refuse to acknowledge the facts, because they endorsed globalization. It was a win-win situation, they said.
They were wrong.
Look here to see where the blame lies for the rosy picture we've all been getting
At a time when America desperately needs the voices of educated people as a counterweight to the disinformation that emanates from the Bush administration and its supporters, economists have discredited themselves. This is especially true for GÇ£free market economistsGÇ¥ who foolishly assumed that international labor arbitrage was an example of free trade that was benefitting Americans. Where is the benefit when employment in US export industries and import-competitive industries is shrinking? After decades of struggle to regain credibility, free market economics is on the verge of another wipeout.No sane economist can possibly maintain that a deplorable record of merely 1,054,000 net new private sector jobs over five years is an indication of a healthy economy. The total number of private sector jobs created over the five year period is 500,000 jobs less than one yearGÇÖs legal and illegal immigration! (In a December 2005 Center for Immigration Studies report based on the Census BureauGÇÖs March 2005 Current Population Survey, Steven Camarota writes that there were 7,9 million new immigrants between January 2000 and March 2005.)
The economics profession has failed America. It touts a meaningless number while joblessness soars. Lazy journalists at the New York Times simply rewrite the Bush administrationGÇÖs press releases.
On February 10 the Commerce Department released a record US trade deficit in goods and services for 2005--$726 billion. The US deficit in Advanced Technology Products reached a new high. Offshore production for home markets and jobs outsourcing has made the US highly dependent on foreign provided goods and services, while simultaneously reducing the export capability of the US economy. It is possible that there might be no exchange rate at which the US can balance its trade.
Polls indicate that the Bush administration is succeeding in whipping up fear and hysteria about Iran. The secretary of defense is promising Americans decades-long war. Is death in battle BushGÇÖs solution to the job depression? Will Asians finance a decades-long war for a bankrupt country?
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com
Thinking about economics has about the same effect on me as thinking about math (nightmares, sweaty palms, etc.), but even I can see something wrong with the Bush Administration's pablum and all the happy talk by "free market economists". We need more people out there blogging and pointing out the fallacies in the current view in Forbes Magazine and on Townhall.com that all is hunky dory in our economy.
They look at each other and cannot determine why and how the economy reacts.
I learned a long time ago it is all a shell game. Just listen to Greenspans comments over the past 12 years. He cannot even make heads or tails of what market pressure and other factors influence the economy.
So I say - roll the dice you have as much understanding of the economy as the ones working on policy.
That said, Roberts and Webb are both good people from the Reagan era. I am glad that they are finding places in leadership.
To solve some of the problems mentioned by Roberts I hope that Jim Webb will introduce legislation in the Senate similar to the Defend the American Dream Act introduced in the House by Representative Pascrell in N.J..
That will protect many American high-tech and engineering jobs - and hopefully make those careers more attractive for American college students.
The damage done over the past 15-20 years as a result of current "free trade" policies can't be reversed by simply passing laws. We need to change how we view our participation in global trade and to define what constitutes a healthy trading relationship. I would stipulate that measurements of trade balances and deficits are one indicator but so are the advancements of freedoms, stronger environmental laws, and labor protections. We must stop our current race to the bottom.
Not arguing with the economics here as much as arguing for clear articulation of coherence on economic and social issues.
I think they are moderates with a few querky and in my oppinion extreme points of view. They seem to lean more to the right than to the left. Of course who defines what "extreme" means? Some groups are attempting to label people who want balanced trade and sustainable levels of immigration as "extreme". I think it is a rather moderate position to take, myself.
That said, Paul Craig Roberts is spot on with his analysis. I don't believe he has shown extreme points of view in this or any articles I have read authored by him.
Most of the articles I get from vdare have been forwarded to me so I manage to filter out things that many people would consider in poor taste.
Here are links to other groups on the act:
IEEE-USA on the act: http://www.ieeeusa.o...
Communications Workers of America on the act: http://www.cwa-union...
WashTech (an IT union) on the act: http://www.washtech....
Programmers Guild on the act: http://www.prweb.com...
NorthJersey.com article on the act: http://www.northjers...
Full text of the bill: http://www.theorator...
Unfortunately, lobbyists such as Harris Miller want to continue the exploitation of both foreign workers and American workers: http://news.com.com/...
And finally Representative Pascrell on his on bill in a letter to the editor: http://www.northjers...
'Defend the American Dream'
Our country is suffering a silent crisis in the technology sector. Corporations have fired thousands of highly qualified American technology workers in order to replace them with lower-paid foreign workers, while the U.S. government turns a blind eye.
Perhaps during the high-tech boom period in the 1990s, there was a rationale for expanding the H-1B visa program, which allows companies to hire skilled foreign workers to fill gaps in the workforce. But at a time when unemployment among tech workers is higher than the overall jobless rate, Congress must stop aiding and abetting the flagrant exploitation of American and foreign workers. When Congress reconvenes, I plan to reintroduce the "Defend the American Dream Act," which will significantly strengthen labor protections for U.S. and foreign workers by requiring that all H-1B employers pay their workers the prevailing wage. First, however, those employers must conduct a search for qualified American workers. A centerpiece of the bill would give real teeth to the labor protections by establishing the right of employees to challenge their own mistreatment in court.
We in Congress have a moral obligation to prevent our skilled workforce from being dangerously eroded. If we do not act soon, we are in real danger of outsourcing the middle class of our country out of existence.
Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., Paterson
The problem is, what is being practiced ISN'T free trade. Free trade is about a country pulling together its own capital, developing its own processes, and training its own workers and then marketing their product on the open market. They can either sell a few single products/processes, such as building fenders for a cars, or a completed item like a pair of trousers. But the concept and the entire process is theirs- to sell and profit from.
What is happening is that companies are providing all the capital, all of the processes, almost everything EXCEPT the worker and the quality control expertise. They aren't trading ANYTHING. And of course, as the logistics of even attempting to manage that even in a modern age demosntrate, the well educated need to be near the factories. So, viola. Now all the white collar jobs follow the blue collar ones over seas, and the US workers are forced to survive off of the shit quality products made cheaply overseas, creating a giant whirlpool.
Meanwhile, the highest quality items supposedly being manufactured in the US- and the west as a whole, are still FAR too expensive for anyone new wage earner in the 3rd world countries to buy.
For those few who have managed to survive, they have been hit again with the inflation caused.
The big picture missed is that none of the gains have ended up kin the hands of employees, and that eventually the party will end. Nothing is static, and you un-employ enough middle class Americans, and you will see that those locations selling us so much crap are OVERCAPITALIZED. They can't sell us what we don;t have the money to buy.
Companies are becoming LESS productive as a result. Fine, if they want to offer fewer jobs, and buy more machines, but somebody has to build those machines......you know, more productive? Thats what a higher cost of skilled labour does. And by the way, skilled labour DOES get more expensive in a developed economy. Thats the way it is. Business cries about that, but they cry unless its all handed to them for free anyways.
In the long run, if you support free trade, you DON'T support these current policies and the CEOs. They aren't about trade, they are about avoiding paying for a workforce through a bunch of lies. They don;t want to compete, becuase it means they might have to work a little to make money. They just want to run tog et in on the bandwagon, thinking theya re safe.
News Flash! When the house of cards falls down, you won't have anything nice to live in either. When China is done with you, they will kick your butts out and laugh....