There are some statistics, which are absolutely frightening, and currently the employment ones fill that bill handily. Never having had a job, I cannot imagine being fired. The utter desolation and helplessness of being fired, must be all-consuming. Imagine a typical American bread-winner, with mortgage payments, car payments, credit card debt, kids and wife to support, expensive gasoline to buy, plus insurance, taxes, utilities, and the like. Comes then ( to make like a lawyer) the Challenger, Gray, and Christmas produced graph, showing the job cuts in the US. In June alone, U.S. Corporations announced plans to fire 110,996 persons from their jobs, the highest in 17 months. “Officially,” 538,274 jobs have been lost in America From January through June, 2005. This does not count the jobs lost at the corner hardware, drug store, or grocery store, thanks to a new Wal Mart.
Kodak will cut from 22,000 to 25,000 jobs this year, and by 2007, its payroll will be one third of what it was in 1998. I took a trip last weekend to Vail, Central City, and Steamboat Springs all wonderful Colorado towns. I made my reservations through Travelocity, and due to some confusion, I had to call them. The phone was answered by a man in India, whose English was barely decipherable. I won’t use Travelocity again, if they have their employees in India, handling trips made by Americans. Do the Indians need work? I’m sure they do! Do Americans also need work? Damned right they do, and why deal with a company who hires foreigners rather than Americans? I won’t. I have had a lot of calls from people who say their bank uses Indians for their information services. Would I deal with such a bank? Never.
The graph showing the job cuts covers 18 months, going back to January of 2004. The lowest month of job losses appears to be June of 2004, and May of 2005. Those months seem to show a job loss for those months alone of slightly over 60,000. The rest of the months seem to average about 90,000 jobs cut EACH MONTH! Now, there are about 280 million men, women, and children in America. Can we assume that by eliminating the kids, and perhaps half of the women, that there are about 150 million people working in America? If 75,000 jobs are cut or lost each month, theoretically in 166 years, there will be no one working. This of course is ridiculous, because even though most of what we use and buy is made elsewhere, there will always have to be the trash men, clerks in stores, utility workers, car repairmen, bus drivers, and the like, which cannot be moved overseas. Now isn’t that comforting?
An April 7, 2004 issue of US News and World Report stated that the total job loss from the time that George Bush took office, till March 2004 was 1,800,000. Comforted yet? The Labor Research Association says the job loss by George Bush is the greatest since 1929. It further says that the average time of being out of work is 20 weeks. Well then, jobs must be available, mustn’t they? Surely, but as Paul Craig Roberts says in one of his columns, the found jobs are usually a lot lower in pay than the job which was lost. Out of 144,000 private sector jobs created, all were in domestic services.
56,000 jobs in professional and business services.
38,000 jobs in education and health services.
19,000 jobs in leisure and hospitality, almost all of which were waitresses and bartenders.
10,000 jobs in membership associations and organizations.
16,000 in financial activities.
None of the above were manufacturing jobs, or jobs which increases a nations’ wealth. Fixing things, serving food and drink, or checking people into a hotel, are not what made America great. There are lots of cartoons and jokes abound which say that ’a lot of jobs have been created, and I have three of them.’ The man usually was laid off from a well paying job which went overseas, and ended up serving hamburgers, cutting lawns, or driving a taxi. How accurate are government figures regarding employment? Governments will always pad their figures to make things seem better than the are. As an example, in the Lone Star State of Texas, the government said that Texas had only lost 600 jobs between March, 2002 and March of 2003. The real figures were close to 67,000. According to the Economic Policy Institute, 797,315 net job losses are the result of NAFTA. CAFTA will soon be on the books, costing more jobs.
Offshoring has advantages for outfits like Tavelocity and the local bank or credit card outfit who won’t hire Americans for their jobs. In India, there are large classes, which teach Indians how to speak English like Americans, rather than like they do in their native land. The reason Indians are taking the telephone answering jobs, is because they speak English from childhood, albeit with a certain Indian accent. They are trained to speak it like you and I speak it. Why? Obviously, so that we Americans won’t become upset at having an Indian, 10,000 miles away, giving us our current balances or travel route. Why do large corporations do this? Because an Indian will work for maybe $3 American per day, and be rich in India. A recent speaker at my Kiwanis Club has spent years in India, and he says the dollar will go a long way there. 60 cent dinners, and equally cheap rooms, and travel, he says, are common if one travels in India. That may be, but I am not going there, because I have seen their wretched living conditions, and I want no part of it.
So the Chinese take out manufacturing jobs by the literal millions, and now the Indians are taking our phone answering jobs, by at least the tens of thousands, and more as soon as they can be trained to speak English like Americans speak it. These nations have currencies which are very weak, compared to the dollar. Note that no phone answering jobs or manufacturing jobs are going to Germany, Switzerland, or Europe in general. Phone answering won’t work there, because of their accent, which would be virtually impossible to convert to an American one, but make things, the Europeans can do, and do extremely well, as witness the BMW and Mercedes cars, Swiss watches, etc. Why aren’t those jobs going to Europe? Because our dollar is very weak compared to their euros, and there would be no economic advantage.
So what’s this “weak” and “strong” dollar stuff all about anyway? All currencies are inherently “weak,” because none of them are backed by anything. All currencies are merely pieces of paper with fancy ink and engravings on them, which represent zilch. Why are some stronger than others? Two reasons. First, is because of faith and confidence. The world has confidence or faith in the soundness of the nation issuing the currency. America, has for generations been the champion of strength, viability, efficiency, fortitude, freedom, and all the good things we were taught about when we were going to school. Plus we have a mighty military force with lethal, state of the art weapons. The faith and trust in American dollars, is fading fast, and the faith will continue to erode at an ever faster clip. Why? Because of Iraq, shortage of oil, job losses, stock market going nowhere, manufacturing going overseas, and wonderful nice things like that. The second reason, is that places like China and India, having been in the dumps for so many hundreds of years, have begun to wake up and smell the fresh air. When you have worked for nothing for your entire life, have lived in a hut, and known no better, a quarter an hour is a huge jump in living conditions! Especially, when you are buying things, which are similarly priced in a low value currency. The result is that millions of Chinese are living it up, while Americans are now in the dumps. Places have been reversed.
What has caused the dollar to virtually collapse? It’s government my dear, and there is no other reason. According to last Sunday’s Parade magazine, the US government spends $6.8 billion per day, or $2.5 trillion per year. From what I can discover, the tax receipts are $1.728 trillion, not counting the trillions of dollars in un-funded Social Security, Medicaid, and other items the government is pledged to pay over the years. Richard Russell says the US is adding a trillion dollars a year in paper dollars to the economy, and the figures bear this out. If then, the government is spending $2.5 trillion, collecting $1.728 trillion, and is responsible for countless other long-term debts, obviously the currency is WEAK, thanks to government. In other words, thanks to government, the title of this, “Out You Go,” or job losses, is not your bosses’ fault, or the CEO of the corporation for which you work but good old Uncle Sam! Is there any way to stop this slide? Not that I am aware of, and if you know of one, PLEASE INFORM ME! Otherwise, protect yourself. (You know how).