FDR Had It Right
If the economy is going to come back, we need to buy -- and make -- American.
Our greatest primary task," said Franklin D. Roosevelt in his first Inaugural Address, "is to put people to work." Roosevelt had no doubt that this task took precedence over all others. "Our international trade relations," he continued, "though vastly important, are in point of time and necessity secondary to the establishment of a sound national economy."
Obama is no FDR...he's giving away jobs, money, and prosperity...
The global economic crisis that began in 2007 and our own ongoing jobless recovery are each the result of the very wrong-headed globalization of finance and trade that began in the early 1980s and continued over the next two decades...
The shift of the U.S. from a nation that produces wealth to one that consumes it has created an American economy that is inherently prone to crisis, structurally unbalanced, and incapable of maintaining, let alone growing, a large, vibrant middle class....
A jobless recovery = people on Main Street don't matter anymore - they are disposable.
America cannot prosper over the long term with less than 12 percent of its GDP coming from manufacturing. This sector should generate at least 20 percent of our nation's GDP. And when it does, 12 million more workers will be employed directly and up to another 30 million workers indirectly as a result of the very high multiplier effect of new manufacturing jobs.
Cash for caulking and solar panels made in China aren't the road to long term recovery.
When even CEOs of multinational corporations are citing the need for bolstering domestic manufacturing, it is extremely disconcerting to hear some in the administration and Congress still argue that a service job is just as valuable as a manufacturing job. The fundamental differences between manufacturing and service jobs are indisputable:
n Compensation for manufacturing jobs is on average 15 percent greater than for non-manufacturing jobs.
n Manufacturing, especially in import-intensive industries such as textiles and electronic- and computer-equipment production, offers the best opportunities to women and people of color for wage parity.
n Manufacturing has by far the largest multiplier effect of all job sectors, creating $1.40 of additional economic activity for each $1 of direct spending, 2.5 other jobs on average for each job in the sector, and, at the upper end, 16 associated jobs for each high-tech manufacturing job. By contrast, each new service job, even a high-tech one, creates on average no more than 1.6 associated jobs.
n Service jobs do very little to help the U.S. balance of trade.
...We will also continue to disadvantage American workers and taxpayers in favor of our major trade competitors, which already have initiatives in place that advantage their own manufacturers and producers.
Also, disadvantage American workers in favor of Wall Street, large global corporations, and wealthy global citizens with tax-free trusts.
read more here -
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=fdr_had_it_rightObama is taking the nation down the wrong track.
