As I perused the Milwaukee-Journal Sentinel Online several days ago, one story caught my eye regarding 'Retirees Underestimate Health Costs'. The piece mentioned how too many grossly underestimate the out of pocket costs that will face them, even with Medicare. I posted a comment observing that this shows the Republicans are out of it with their Medicare repair plans, since the out of pocket costs will be MUCH higher (as with Ryan's plan). Also, the Journal -sentinel piece gave the lie to the widely circulated Repuke myth that Medicare is basically a "freebie". No, it certainly is not!
But on scanning many of the other comments I was astounded to behold one after the other bearing essentially the same refrain, which might be summarized as follows:
Well, anyone coulda told the feds that none of these entitlements would be sustainable! People, seniors are just gonna have to SAVE more and work longer!
Oh yeah? Says WHO? Most of these folks, so righteous in their anti-entitlement mentality have no clue at all, not one in a million, that an American jobless future is already upon us and will not be getting any easier, anytime soon. So once more, it;'s time to pull back the heavy lids of delusion and open some brains to the stiff sunlight of reality! (Hoping that Jack Nicholson's famous refrain (from the movie 'A Few Good Men') "You can't handle the TRUTH!" won't apply to any of my readers.)
At least two recent extensive articles, one in TIME and another in The Economist sheds much needed light, along with a recently released working paper for the Council on Foreign Relations, and which was authored by Michael Spence and Sandile Hlathshwayo. The latter's paper specifically warned that "growth and employment are set to diverge for decades in the U.S.". What does this mean exactly? It means that for the next multi-decades, and perhaps forever, economic growth as measured by the GDP and unemployment will be decoupled. Whereas before - much before! - the more workers the more economic growth, that will no longer apply. Now, LESS workers - or should I say LESS AMERICAN workers, will translate into higher GDP. The Jobless future is here, but actually - it has been with us for some time!
As far back as 1995, The Wall Street Journal noted the 'Million Missing Men' in a title by the same name, estimating that one million workers aged 55 and over were absent from the work force. They had evidently been downsized then vanished. However, not really! They simply maintained low profiles and after searching for decently remunerative work, gave up and dropped out. Many lived off their wives' earnings, but many others lived off savings and investments of their own, or took odd jobs to just keep heads afloat as they reduced their consumption dramatically - and maybe lived with a relative or friend.
In its own article ('Decline of the Working Man', p. 75, April 30th) The Economist observes:
"Of all the rich, Group of Seven Economies, America's unemployment rate has the lowest share of 'prime age' males in work: just over 80% of those aged between 25 and 54 have a job, compared to 95% in 1995"
Not mentioned, but often noted in assorted AARP Bulletins, are the 45% of those over 55 who have no job. Not even part time work. Even the 80% working figure given by the Economist is somewhat overblown because from the latest BLS stats and census data barely half those 80% working have full time jobs. The rest are underemployed in part time jobs, often patching two or three pissant pay jobs together to make ends meet. As authors William Wolman and Anne Colamosca (The Judas Economy: The Triumph of Capital and the Betrayal of Work) have noted: the effect of chronic underemployment, especially among those over 50 is just as pernicious as long term unemployment. It means, for example, that a large swath of people will not be able to save enough to support any kind of retirement scenario and will depend almost exclusively on Social Security. It is these, of course, for whom Medicare will be most critical for their survival and the injunction to "work more and save more" becomes more a cruel joke at the behest of a clown or moron.
The Economist, as good a journal as it is, unfortunately gets the base causes for this situation totally wrong, which is mystifying. They insist, for example, that many Americans have "let their schooling slide", meaning that they often haven't revamped their technical skills or trained for new fields. But this is false. Many reports (including a special series in The Denver Post some four years ago) noted how people in Denver - let go after the tech bust- had retrained only to find their new jobs sent out to India, because of lower wages and few or no benefits. The series also supported Jeremy Rifkin's thesis (in The End of Work) that high tech and white collar redundancy would follow that for lower skilled workers.
In the computer-tech domain this is exactly what has happened. While we do see the occasional piece bragging about Google hiring 12,000 new workers, say in California, the mainstream media leaves unreported how many hundreds of thousands of computer-tech jobs are dispatched to Bangalore or Delhi in a given year. The Post series noted that youngsters planning college aren't stupid either, and having seen swatches of good computer jobs dispatched offshore (including perhaps for their parents) they aren't that convinced a computer science degree will get them very far anymore. Nor are they willing to gamble (leaving university with debts in the tens of thousands of dollars, that they'll nail a Google job by beating 100,000 to 1 odds. Hence, more and more turning to medical tech and health services. But even those jobs will be terminated or never emerge, if the Republicans manage to overturn Obama's Affordable Health Care Act! It is precisely because up to 35 million more patients will be added by 2014 that those medical care jobs have a potential to materialize, but not if the legislation is torpedoed by Repuke bean counters who are penny wise and pound foolish!
Meanwhile, the TIME piece (May 20, p. 36) notes two elements that only appear to have been superficially covered by The Economist and which are playing new roles in engendering an American jobless future:
1) The re-definition of productivity: that is, productivity is now defined by "cutting jobs and finding ways of making the same products with fewer people". As pointed out by the author (F. Zakaria): "At many major companies profits have returned to 2007 levels but with many thousands fewer workers".
2)The force of globalization: making a single market for many goods and services which don't require American workers for production, OR American consumers to buy them. This single market amounts to more than 400 million having entered the global labor force, from China, India, South Africa, Indonesia and elsewhere. All now with money to spend, and all willing to work at one third or less the pay of an American, and for NO benefits!
Both of these are ominous forces, and any American who still insists on wearing rose-colored glasses has only himself to blame if blind-sided. It is clear that these coupled forces will continue with no imminent signs of abating, unless some hidden, unfactored counterforce causes one or both to halt. In the case of (2) the most likely source of haltage would be a massive energy crisis (maybe induced by Peak Oil arriving very quickly with its worst manifestations) or perhaps a pandemic like Bird Flu or another "1918 Spanish Flu" epidemic (since that virus was recently re-engineered using frozen tissue s extracted from dead Eskimos who died of the virus and were found encased in ice). But even here, the costs inflicted on the global markets would likely be every bit as parlous as inflicted on Americans. The most probable result would be that everyone loses, including Americans.
The only remaining hope is to persuade American companies to begin to re-hire American workers for decent paying jobs with benefits, not merely McJobs which (at an average remuneration of $18,000) simply won't allow people to save enough not to have to depend almost entirely on "entitlements". (Indeed, Walmart has consistently advised its workers who can't afford its health plans, to try to sign on to Medicaid). The question is how to entice them to create the jobs, and the only way I see is much higher corporate taxation (with zero loopholes) if they don't.
Of course, another option is to resurrect the 700,000 public service jobs cut by Reagan during the hysteria over "big bad government". We can recall a goodly set of these were air traffic controller jobs, which loss we're still paying the price for. And while pundits laugh and make jokes about sleeping controllers, no one wants to go near the real reason: too few experienced controllers on the job (which numbers are necessitated by America's antiquated airline route system, as noted in an earlier blog). Then there is the massive infrastructure repair needed, an effort that could easily employ a skilled army of public workers for YEARS, to build new bridges, water and sewer mains and highways. But in the deficit obsession era, no one again wants to go anywhere near this! So, we just allow our infrastructure - the backbone of our nation - to degenerate into 3rd world status.
Apart from these possible major influences or checks on the current 'jobless productivity' dynamic, most Americans face an extremely impoverished and bleak future. Which makes it even more critical that the remaining social support systems, including Social Security and Medicare, be ferociously protected against any further weakening - either by Nazified and brutish tea bagging Repukes, or by pussified, wussified Demos afraid of their own shadows and desperately needing backbone transplants - as well as a pointed reminder of the PEOPLE their party used to represent before too much corporate cash was infused for political campaign contributions!
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