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Pink, Blue and White: exporting jobs

by Mark Gisleson

Bob Herbert writes about "White Collar Blues" today in the NYTimes, and it really set me to thinking. Thanks to this blog, I'm probably going to stop taking new resume clients and am going to get paid to do fill-in work for another political website. Herbert's column summed up both my antipathy towards career development work, and my need to fight back against the "empire" more directly.

I am surprised at how passive American workers have become.

A couple of million factory positions have disappeared in the short time since we raised our glasses to toast the incoming century. And now the white-collar jobs are following the blue-collar jobs overseas.

Americans are working harder and have become ever more productive — astonishingly productive — but are not sharing in the benefits of their increased effort. If you think in terms of wages, benefits and the creation of good jobs, the employment landscape is grim.

The economy is going great guns, we're told, but nearly nine million Americans are officially unemployed, and the real tally of the jobless is much higher. Even as the Bush administration and the media celebrate the blossoming of statistics that supposedly show how well we're doing, the lines at food banks and soup kitchens are lengthening. They're swollen in many cases by the children of men and women who are working but not making enough to house and feed their families.

How do you tell someone their job search is screwed, not because they're not trying hard enough, but because our government has made it easier for corporations to export jobs? A compliant media obsesses about Iraq and terrorism, but when's the last time you saw a line at a soup kitchen on the local news?

An executive at Microsoft, the ultimate American success story, told his department heads last year to "Think India," and to "pick something to move offshore today."

These matters should be among the hottest topics of our national conversation. We've already witnessed the carnage in manufacturing jobs. Now, with white-collar jobs at stake, we've got executives at I.B.M. and Microsoft exchanging high-fives at the prospect of getting "two heads for the price of one" in India.

It might be a good idea to throw a brighter spotlight on some of these trends and explore the implications for the long-term economy and the American standard of living.

"If you take this to its logical extreme, the implications for the entire middle-class wage structure in the United States are terrifying," said Thea Lee, an economist with the A.F.L.-C.I.O. "Now is the time to start thinking about policy solutions."

But that's exactly what we're not thinking about. Government policy at the moment is focused primarily on what's best for the corporations. From that perspective, job destruction and wage compression are good things — as long as they don't get too much high-profile attention.

There is absolutely nothing to stop corporations from destroying American communities if it means they save some money in the short run. Long-term costs aren't part of the equation anymore. Wal-Mart stories abound, but it's rare to hear about a worker victory on any front.

Globalization may be a fact of life. But that does not mean that its destructive impact on American families can't be mitigated. The best thing workers can do, including white-collar and professional workers, is to organize. At the same time, the exportation of jobs and the effect that is having on the standard of living here should be relentlessly monitored by the government, the civic sector and the media. The public has a right to know what's really going on.

Is it just me, or is it harder and harder for everyone to hear the word "media" without mentally adding the word "whores" afterwords? What kind of news gathering organizations ignore a story like this? The whole world is changing but we systematically ignore the consequences of those changes.

We live in a world controlled by corporations out for the short-term buck. I heard a radio commentator mention Lee Iacocca this weekend. The upshot was that when Iacocca wrote his autobiography, every CEO in the country started dreaming about becoming more rich and more famous, just like Lee. That's when the meme started about how this country would be better off if it was run like a business. That idea didn't make sense then, and now that we've tried it, it's obvious that it doesn't make sense as a model for governance. Government is responsible to the people, not shareholders, but business people in government ignore that and keep rewarding their old shareholders, making the rich richer at everyone else's expense.

I've written about this before in other forums, but corporate greed always reminds me of a game we played in my high school Civics class. The class was divided into three groups, and we got to take turns making the rules. When my group was put in charge, we changed the rules so everyone else had to do what we said. In short order, we controlled all the wealth and that was that. [Sidebar: then I screwed it up by giving all my money to the poorest group, which really pissed off the teacher.]

It was a stupid game, and it's an even stupider way to run the economy. Repeat after me, "It's the greater good, stupid."

* *

According to BOPNews, Dean’s getting most of the blog coverage right now, which goes a long ways towards explaining why I’m sitting on a bunch of Dean links, with only one or two for some of the other candidates. True, most of my links are to newspapers, but, for quite a while now, I’ve been suspicious that major media coverage is increasingly driven by blog coverage. Reporters who came of age sucking on the RNC tit for story feeds have been quick to take their lead from online pundits. (Steve Gilliard is even less kind.)

For the record, here's the weekend roundup of coverage of Democratic candidates:

As I mentioned, tons on Howard Dean, including three more links this morning courtesy of Romenesko:

Vermont journalists cash in with a quickie book. Last Friday's Paul Krugman commentary on Dean and the press corps, and Eric Alterman in The Nation on the same topic. And the LA Times thinks press criticism of Dean doesn't stick (finally, a teflon Democrat?).

Rick Lyman has a new bio piece on Dean. In case you didn't hear, Dean ripped the other candidates this weekend, saying that the party can't win without him.

Those pesky sealed records in Vermont aren't going away. Dean's tax incentives are also under posthumous fire.

The Stop Dean movement may benefit from cell phone technology.

Kucinich is the new Sharpton? Dennis Kucinich continues to get some nice coverage, mainly I suspect because the media loves to quote someone who can't win.

Joe Lieberman got some ink for his abortion comments, and his defense of his abortion comments.

Wes Clark in New Hampshire.

Dick Gephardt talks trade in South Carolina, and at an Iowa airport.

* *

The New York Times editorializes on military preparedness, TalkLeft links to reports on "stop-loss" orders that keep soldiers from coming home after their tour of duty is up, children of reservists complain, and Common Dreams reprints an article on more lies that led us to war. Of course, Paul Bremer totally contradicted Tony Blair on a key talking point. If you're interested, here's the dead and wounded count, and more from Steve Gilliard.

To say that troop morale sucks would be a grievous understatement. Via Cursor, the Chicago Tribune reports on military suicides, and the Boston Globe has a possible suicide by a guard at Guantanamo.

Meanwhile, David Neiwert rips the administration for failing to do anything about non-Arab related domestic terrorism.

* *

Recycled from Babelogue, the Sunday NYTimes had a great read on how porno books helped topple the French aristocracy. Frankly, it takes very little imagination to see how this story applies to blogs (porn) and Bush (Louis XV). The analogy is a little strained, altho I'm sure Karl Rove has fantasies about playing the role of Mme. la comtesse du Barry.

* *

If you find David Brooks as insufferable as I do, you may enjoy these responses (CalPundit, Atrios, Josh Marshall) to his horrendous editorial from last Saturday.

Posted by Steve Perry at December 29, 2003 11:10 AM

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