Cross-Posted on My Left Wing
There are numerous sexy issues that Democrats could use in 2006. Republican corruption, Schiavo, Delay, and the Supreme Court come to mind. There are great political issues. Standing in the shadow of these issues is the boring and mundane idea of job creation. This is not sexy. It’s hard to get excited about it. However: Make no mistake. If the Democrats do not make meaningful job creation a top priority in 2006, we will not be able to build a meaningful long-term governing coalition.
Let me explain the importance of job creation with a story.
One of the best movies about music is Hail! Hail! Rock and Roll. Keith Richards puts together a back-up band for Chick Berry’s 60th birthday. The director used the movie as a way to tell part of the story of early rock `n roll. He interviewed Jerry Lee Lewis to add some oral history. An interviewer asked Lewis about payola, where the record companies would pay DJs to play certain records. The interviewer asked a question along the lines of “These were great records. Why did you have to pay to get them played on the radio.”
Lewis: “Everybody wants to be…appreciated.”
While everybody likes the emotional boost from public or private compliment, people respond just as positively to meaningful pay increases. This is what Lewis was talking about in the above-mentioned quote. Like it or not, one of the most prominent and best-understood methods of job-place appreciation is to give people meaningful raises. I guarantee you if my boss gives me a 10% raise, he’s earned some loyalty from me. It’s that simple.
And therein lies the problem. On the whole, people are not making meaningful gains in wages. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average earnings increase from 2000-2004 was 3.86%, 3.22%, 3.12%, 1.71% and 2.39% respectively. However wages have to be compared to inflation to determine the real rate of wage growth. For the same years, annual inflation was 3.4%, 2.8%, 1.6%, 2.3% and 2.7% respectively. When inflation is subtracted from wages, overall wage growth becomes .46%, .42%, 1.52%, -.59% and-.31% respectively for 2000-2004.
At the same time, people have seen increases faster than inflation in health insurance premiums, gasoline, spending on prescription drugs and tuition payments for college. These are necessary expenses that are taking a larger and larger percentage of a stagnant pie of weekly earnings.
This problem is exacerbated by the lack of creation of numerous high-paying jobs. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the three industries that have had net gains in number of jobs created since 2000 are government employees (+791,000), Health Care and Social Assistance (+1,279,000) and Food Service/Drinking Places (+465,000). According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, these are not the highest-paying jobs the US could create. Food Service and drinking places have an average hourly wage of $7.46/hour. Health Care has several job categories. To no ones surprise, doctors and dentists make really good money. However, their assistants don’t, coming at $16.20/hour. The BLS does not provide statistics for government workers. It’s also important to remember these are raw wages, which don’t include deductions for things like health insurance which alone usually comprises 10% of income.
In short, we’re not making high-paying jobs that provide some economic security. It’s not enough to simply create jobs. It’s important to ask what kind of jobs are created to determine if we can do better. And the answer to that is clearly no. We can do better.
http://www.bls.gov/ncs/ocs/sp/ncbl0635.pdf
http://www.bea.doc.gov/
and not enough discussion by our government representatives by any means.
Your absolutely correct in the method to winning the people though, it’s the wallet! Works on everyone, that is not in control of the business. The “Ownership” society they have established will do everything in their power to stop such a movement.
There is too much payola going on both sides of the isles, and has been for far too long, this must stop. But how are we the public going to do such? The ones we elect to represent us will not stand for Term Limits, so who do we turn to?
If we could answer those questions, we could solve so many woes for the public.
How to get the public going? For me it’s simple: LivingWage – not “minimum” wage. Honoring labor isn’t just a union slogan.
I agree 100%, how do we make the pricks do it? We know how we would like to see it done, but I think we’re going to have an arm wrestle with them to achieve this ; )
Arm wrestle. They’ve got size, we’ve got numbers. Comes down to the ballot box – as usual. Sucks.
Corruption works just fine, perhaps even better, on term-limited politicians. For example, what’s to stop a term-limited politician from selling her/his vote for a future higher-paying job. Since the politician in question knows that he/she will soon be looking for work, this would be a potent enticement. And what about the politician who refuses to be corrupted? Do we want them to be term-limited?
Total agreement, but who is going to watch the reps, and reign them in, or turn them loose in the home stretch?
We need more SAY in our government, and more voting on issues, and particularly REAL uncorrupted voting would be a great start…; )
I’m glad to see the response’s to my comment, it’s going to take a revolution I’m afraid to change things, and I don’t mean that in the militant terms either.
There’s a lot of work to be done, and the opposition is tremendous.
was the fact that the economy was doing so well even drug dealers could make the choice to move to a safer and saner occupation. “The rising tide lifts all boats”. I guess the tide is going out and all we see is the debris on the bottom. Some of the debris are dinos. We need to hold Dems to a higher standard to get our vote. We need to encourage more people to run and get competition rather than machinery cogs. Blogs can do this. We can let someone come up from unknown to known and get funding.
there has to be some sort of emphasis on health benefits, or another push for single-payer/national health plan.
Health care costs are going to eat up even more of the average Americans income in the coming years. My spouse has a good job with a strong union; if he retires after I turn 55 (9 years from now), we’ll both have medical coverage for the rest of our lives, with probably a $25-50 monthly fee depending on the contract in force. (It’s currently $25, but I don’t expect it to stay there.) Not everyone in this country is going to be that lucky, and Medicare is in worse shape than Social Security.
I’ve often wondered why business hasn’t been more supportive of a national health plan. This would take a big expense out of their pocket, and help put small businesses on a little more level playing field. A healthier workforce is ultimately a more productive workforce; if your kids are getting regular checkups, you’re not going to have to take time off from work to stay home with them, and if you’re getting regular preventative medicine treatments, you’re not going to be calling in sick as often.
Just my $0.02…
For me, health care is a seperate issue, although it is strongly inter-related with jobs and economic prosperity.
it’s interconnected, if you see how much of your pay goes to health care costs, or you see how much your employer pays for health insurance.
The spouse’s paycheck stub lists everything — employee responsibilities/deductions (taxes, union dues, etc), and employer responsibilities/payments (taxes, insurance, etc.). It’s amazing to look at sometime and see how much insurance would cost if it had to come out of our own pocket…and in reality it would cost a lot more, as we wouldn’t be able to benefit from the group health costs.
Maybe if the Democrats put forward health care as benefitting business, they might win over some on the Right…
when a company figures ones salary, they consider the benefit package that goes along with that salary. They consider it wages too…:o(
One of my graduate school mentors is very proud of his work on contingent workers, or, as he likes to put it in his thick Alabama accent, “what are the indicators of a truly shitty job.” Three items hang together: 1) low wages, 2) lack of health care, and 3)a lack of retirement benefits. If you met one of these conditions, you most likely met all three and probably had a seasonal job digging ditches for a variety of local construction concerns.
Highly correlated with these three items? Low levels of unionization in the industries where contingent laborers are concentrated.
FWIW
Spot on with this. I’m a veteran of the manufacturing sector and after three plant closings and each new job paying less than the last I can say we desperately need decent wages. Most people I work with are politically apathetic because we know there is no one on our side, no one who cares if we make a living wage. If the Dems would make that priority they’d make real progress with us blue collar folk. Less moving jobs out of the country and universal health care would just about clinch it for them, if there is a decent and fair election process.
I agree about creating good paying jobs vs the Wal Mart/McDonald land jobs…that leads nowhere and fast creating even more problems.
I think however that making job creation/livable wage a priority for Democrats can be ‘sexy’..You just need to have to have charismatic politician, the truth and the right talking points to get peoples attention. After all jobs effect every single person in the country. The biggest stumbling block in all this is of course the media. If they don’t cover anyone pushing for livable wage/job creation except for soundbites periodically how do you get people motivated?
It seems to me that the place to start is at the local/state level to make people more aware of what their legislatures are doing or not doing-state wise and federally. To this end it would really be nice to see a local station for instance have a daily reports of what is happening in the state legislature when it’s in session. Instead of reporting things either after the fact or to late to rally people around a particular bill or more likely against any given bill.
Or they should have a daily legislative update-in and out of session- just like they do for sports. If people were told daily what is happening it would become part of their collective consciousness and in turn also make them aware and more able to do something about state or local government. Like job creation for the state and viewers might start asking why their representatives were pushing some obscure bill benefiting a big company instead of working at funding programs for job creation.