“While affordable health care is criticially {sic} important to Americans, making a living is more urgent.”
-Robert Reich
Robert Reich Neglects to Mention Real Solution for Getting Americans Back to Work
On the face of it, the title of Robert Reich's post Health Care Reform is Critically Important, But Getting Americans Back to Work is More So would appear to summarize what yours truly has been saying over and over again: It's not the Economy, Stupid. It's YOUR JOB. As I have said before, affordable health care for Americans is not an issue as long as they have good jobs. But Reich's post misses the mark entirely about the real causes behind American unemployment/underemployment and for the necessary solution to get Americans back to work.
In his post, Reich is now concerned that Obama's “confused priorities” have led to overspent political capital focused on health care reform instead of “getting Americans back to work” and explains:
“Obama's focus on health care rather than jobs, when the economy is still so fragile and unemployment moving toward double digits, could make it appear that the administration has its priorities confused. While affordable health care is critically important to Americans, making a living is more urgent. Yet the administration's efforts to date on this more basic concern have been neither particularly visible nor coherent.”
If Reich is so concerned about Obama getting Americans back to work, his post handily neglects to answer the obvious question: How is Obama going to get Americans back to work when our elected leaders and their corporate frat boy, neo-feudal corporate paymasters profit legally by giving those jobs to imported workers instead of our own educated citizens via their insider payday machine known as the Cash Cow of Indian Outsourcing?
Last week, the White House issued a new report claiming that the Stimulus Bill saved or created roughly 650,000 U.S. jobs, while during the same period, the federal government has imported more than a million working-age foreign citizens (h/t/ NumbersUSA) “to negate every positive impact the stimulus could have had for U.S. workers.”
Not only does Reich fail to mention corporate America's organized assault on ridding U.S. middle class professionals of their jobs, he also argues that the stimulus package should have been larger, despite the fact that Wall Street is doing great but Main Street and its people are suffering:
“The current rate of unemployment would have been even higher were it not for the federal stimulus package, but the stimulus should have been much larger.”
Confused priorities from Obama, or more obfuscation and denial from Reich regarding the ongoing purge of white collar, educated Americans from U.S. corporations and plummeting wages via the ensuing labor arbitrage? The Obama administration understands that health care reform (in the form of anything that includes the word "reform") is a shiny bullet point on this administration's resume, irregardless if it does nothing to save millions of Americans from health and fiscal crises.
What Mr. Reich fails to mention is that we do not need MORE stimulus money as he proposes, but we need the U.S. government and corporate America to stop giving away U.S. jobs to imported workers when there are not enough jobs for educated white collar Americans. When Reich wants to finally get serious about reporting the real reason why Obama isn't “getting Americans back to work”, below are the numbers and facts from this NumbersUSA article entitled White House Claims 'Stimulus' Saved/Created 650,000 Jobs (but it imported 1,125,000 foreign workers at same time) to help him and Obama get their “priorities straight”:
“NumbersUSA has tried since last November to persuade the news media to monthly report how many working-age foreign citizens are getting first-time work permits from the feds.
It remains the great national secret because the U.S. news media -- from the liberal to the conservative wing -- won't report these facts.
Reich asserts “While affordable health care is criticially {sic} important to Americans, making a living is more urgent.” OK. I'll buy that. As I have said, “Pay Americans well and the health care funds will follow.” But about that jobs thing? For a guy who is supposed to know something about numbers and the economy, it is hard to believe that Reich can't grasp and articulate the simple answer to the problem of importing workers for U.S. jobs when there are not enough of them to employ our own citizens. Perhaps that is precisely the plan, after all?
-2Truthy
3 comments:
But 2T, you know perfectly well that every visa recipient creates elebenty billion new jobs for Americans. And every offshored job creates another elebenty billion domestic jobs. So relax. An administration that makes jobs, Job One, will strive to import as many new workers, and export as many jobs, as possible. In no time we will have all the funds we need for health care, and the American middle class can easily foot the medical bills for half of Mexico, too, which they'll be required to do if the bills in the pipeline pass in their current form.
Sweet zombie Jesus I hate these people. Sorry to be so testy but I just finished getting my evening's dose of Angry over at Economist's View, where I learned from the Brookings Institute that immigration and trade policies had nothing to do with increasing poverty, inequality, and economic stagnation in the U.S. It's all caused by poor mothers not getting married, doncha know. As if that had nothing whatever to do with poor men being unemployed or being offered shit wages due to labor-market glutting. And we all know single motherhood is such a huge problem among educated middle class people.
And the people who write this moronic shit have jobs. Well paying jobs. JFW.
You, Red Oak, have more sense than the tenured professor Reich. This guy with a resume longer than anyone's...thing.
I used to like this guy. When he was teamed up with Clinton, he rocked! How can someone so smart be so dumb? O, wait, can I hear sycophant?
Red "Feversham" Oak, PTL for our comforting economists and their infinite wisdom. Alas, I am reminded of the brick in the window fallacy.
A guy throws a brick (or a divining rod) through the local bakery's huge stained glass window that also messed up his signange that reads "Calvin's Carbon Footprint Cream Horns" very badly. (Big hit with the kids.)
The baker, who had planned on spending the $18K to replace it on a medical tourism trip to Sri-Lanka, is forced to spend it instead by hiring the local glazier, who then contracts the work out to four subbies new to the area who are more than happy to receive on the job training PLUS the added bonus of pay at the minimum wage.
This also causes the baker to lose customers as the shop is closed two weeks longer due to the slower, inexperienced labor. The transaction involves a total of 5 workers, excluding the women and kids in China who made the glass (freight included.)
Who gets the better bang for their buck? Whose economy gains? Let's do the math:
Instead of supporting one or two Sri-Lankan doctors, a nurse, two receptionists, and a lab technician along with a bevy of airline, TSA creeps, ground transport, hotel/restaurant and entertainment professionals, it is easy to see how the U.S. shouldn't bother having any bakeries.
Besides, no educated single mother needs all of those cream horns to distract her from finding her man.
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