JOBS, JOBS, JOBS.

Some interesting facts have been released recently. One, more US companies are bringing manufacturing jobs back on-shore, to the states. Why? The middle class wages in China have been rapidly rising to match the wages of American workers. With this increase, there is no wage advantage to manufacture in China and the cost, as well as hassle of dealing with shipping, makes home grown products better for the bottom line.

However, there is a dark side to this. Many of the companies need capital to build the factories to move the production back to the US. Capital is hard to get right now at an affordable price. The big banks are not that interested in loaning for factories. They can make more money in the monetary exchanges than on low interest loans. If the Republicans were actually for job growth, they would support government backed loans for companies that move their plants back to the US. This would be the best jobs stimulus you can create.

What is unacceptable to Republicans in creating more blue collar jobs, is that there might be more labor unions that traditionally support the Democrats. The Republicans have worked for decades to eliminate blue collars jobs and thus unions. So now they are willing to allow millions to be unemployed and obstruct any monetary support while they are unemployed and generally allow them to loose everything, even their homes, forcing them to live in the streets. Think of the 1930's. That is what they want America to become for political gain.

Unless we make manufacturing a major policy from the White House and Congress to create blue collar jobs, we will have perpetual high unemployment. America needs over 100,000 new jobs per month just to absorb the growth in population that are entering the job market. To employ all those who have lost jobs during this recession you have to add another 100,000 per month of new job openings. The private sector can't create enough service and information jobs to fill the demand to employ everyone.

A recent study proved that Wall Street has not created one blue collar job. Giving additional tax breaks to this group only adds to the funds they pass back and forth in the markets, not in creating new business and jobs.

Secondly, manufacturers will not be adding new jobs in current plants unless there are more consumers buying their product. With wages flat, earning power eliminated and fear of more bad economic times, people are not purchasing as they use to. Thus no job growth.  I do not hear from the Republicans how they would change this. How would they increase wages, establish job security, stimulate people spending again? How would they incentivise companies to move jobs back to America from China and India? I do not hear any sound plan about jobs. Just the same lower taxes on the rich and it will correct itself.

The Democrats have not done much better. Their sheepishness of conservatives, including the "Blue Dog" Democrats, has limited their ability to formulate an effective plan for job creation. They are also suckered into believing that the economy is recovering enough that they need not do much more. Yes, the jobs numbers tell a positive story, but the growth is far to low to bring us out of the depths of this Great Recession.

The problem with direct government employment (as some have suggested), such as the WPA did during the Great Depression, is that these jobs can't continue long term. It does push large sums of money into the economy and gets many back to work in producing the increase demand of products. But when the government shuts down the massive jobs program, you have another spike in unemployment. This was the case during the Great Depression until the war started and employment demands skyrocketed to support the war. Without the war, the economy was ready to slip back down into a deeper depression and could have been the economic end to our country. Government jobs programs will not have the desired effect on our country because we do not have manufacturing in this country, the only economy to benefit from the increase demand for goods will be China who makes the goods, not workers here in the US.

Lets say that the government provides low interest loans to build plants and tax credits to employee workers that amount to say one trillion dollars. If you then can employee all those who want to work at a fair wage that allows them to buy homes, cars, appliances, electronics, etc. then you have a sustainable job market and economic growth. This would also return the middle class that we desperately need. The increase in tax revenue from all those working would easily repay the tax credits and the loans would be repaid by the companies, so in the end, the tax payer wins with jobs, instead of soup lines.

It may be necessary to impose higher tariffs on goods imported from Asia to stimulate moving jobs back on-shore because the goods from Asia will cost the same or slightly more than the goods made here. This does have its own problems with international trade of our goods overseas and protectionism, since part of the reason Japan attacked us at Pearl Harbor Dec 7, 1941 is we imposed high tariffs on their goods coming to America. Could China be the next to attack to open up trade with us and save their rapidly growing economy and middle-class workers?