Bush and Kerry on Jobs

The economy of the next 4 years will be critical to our future success as a USA. How we react to the single most important economic issue we have -- outsourcing -- will to a large extent determine how all of our lives will be, at least economically. Bush's first term has been a massive economic failure because of this outsourcing, and any recoveries from any recessions will hinge solely on how many good jobs are created, and how low we can get our productivity levels.

You see, productivity may sound good and happy but it's actually the thing that's killing us as a country right now. Layoffs have flooded the market with overqualified unluckies, and they are scooping up all the jobs that are still being created by mostly small businesses. This leaves entry-level people on the outside, and they have to get a job in a less profitable career that they are overqualified for. And the people who would have gotten those jobs get even more crappy jobs, and so on down the line. So everyone's overqualified and subsequently getting paid too little money for the economic value they bring to a company. So, workers are working more in crappier jobs to get less money. This is great from the prosective of a corporation, which gets higher profits from this decimation of the labor force. However, for the vast majority of people, otherwise known as the workers (and even many of those who own stock in corporations, if they are also employees somewhere), life has gotten pretty crappy. Wages and benefits are way down, competition for jobs is way up, and people are afraid for their jobs. Morale is what I'm talking about here -- morale is low.

The good news is the worst of outsourcing is over, mainly because many employers ran out of "redundant" employees to lay off. And there's only so many jobs that can be farmed out to a person in another country anyway. Plus, public reaction to it has been so negative that corporations are reluctant to go into it full force without knowing for sure that the economic benefits are going to justify the bad press.

So, which candidate is going to handle these challenges correctly? The answer to this question in an election year is always going to be dicey, because candidates lie. Bill Clinton famously said "middle class tax cut", just like Kerry is doing this year. Clinton then raised taxes on the middle class and was re-elected. Clearly, lying pays off. So, is Kerry lying? His economic plan looks a lot more detailed than Bush's (which can be boiled down to a message of "stay the course") at this point, and has a lot of ideas, both good and bad. If the House is as conservative as it is now, Kerry's going to have a hard time getting a lot of his crappy ideas passed, while his good ones might have a chance. Tax cuts for corporations that keep jobs here? Good idea. Stepping towards a government-run health care system? Not so good.

Bottom line: Do we need a change? Probably. Bush likes to put out rosy stats about our current economy and the growth of good jobs in the past year, but even if you accept those stats it's way too little, way too late. His plan of lowering taxes on rich people and hoping they create jobs is a bit like the traditional liberal position towards education -- "Just throw money at it." I'm just not sure that a strict Conservative like Bush has any Plan B when it comes to an outsourced job market. And the economy is crying out for a Plan B.