What Happened to Jobs?

There are no simple answers to complicated questions. But our government does nothing to stem the factors leading to the collapse of the U.S. economy.

The unemployment rate continues to climb. Those are real people who now face financial ruin. On Friday a new gal came to clean my apartment. She used to process mortgage applications for a large financial institution. When the housing bubble burst, she lost her job. Now she scrubs floors and cleans toilets for a fraction of what she earned before.

The “authorities” say the recession is over. Like shit! Most jobs lost in the past four years are never coming back. My cleaning lady will never get her old job back. The company moved that business to Mexico.

In the 1890's the “robber barons” – Rockefeller, Carnegie, Frisk, Mellon, and their like – controlled American business. The government had to step in to bust the trusts. Most important were new laws protecting workers with wage and hour laws and guarantees to the right to organize labor unions. Today all those laws are being challenged as “unconstitutional.”

In the 1980's companies began laying off older workers before they reached retirement age. Many older workers never found jobs with equal compensation. To replace them companies hired young people fresh out of college who would work for lower salaries, kids who had degrees in business administration but no experience in actually working in a business.

The next step was hostile takeovers, mergers, and acquisitions. Lawyers and brokers made millions for handling the paperwork. C.E.O.’s took enormous bonuses for selling their companies. Often the takeovers were financed by banks. When the merger was completed, the victor company would close factories, lay off thousands of workers – and the price of its stock would go up. Who cared if a town in Iowa was ruined when Maytag was sold to Whirlpool?

Companies moved jobs out of the country. Factories closed in Kentucky and the machinery was shipped to Mexico, where peons worked for $2 an hour. A whole string of factories were built across the Rio Grande from McAllen, Texas, and westward to San Diego, California.

We buy steel from Italy to build bridges in Dallas. Clothes and toys we buy at Wal-Mart come from China. But do we realize how many parts inside our televisions and cars are manufactured in China?

Imports do not meet our manufacturing standards. My brother drove a nail with a Chinese tack hammer. The hammer head broke right off. He installed a new toilet. The plastic ring fastening the drain cracked. Water two inches deep flooded his bathroom.

We need more regulation of manufacturing, both with new corporate law here and with laws on the quality of imports. Try to get Congress to act. The Tea Party would cry, “No, no, no. What we need is less government interference in business!”

Yeah?