Obama Addresses Job Creation For Election Year (Video) and GOP ect..

Obama Addresses Job Creation For Election Year

“President Barack Obama’s “billion-dollar war chest”"

 

We are proud of it.

Still things seem to be going all right, toward reasonable directions. And there is an “INTRIGUING,“ “HILLARIOUS“  title of  Yahoo news.:

 

“The evangelical dilemma in South Carolina: adulterer or Mormon?” 

 

“For South Carolina conservatives, especially evangelical Christians, the 2012 campaign season is the year of magical rethinking. Look at the frontrunners:

If you want a president with a legacy of marital fidelity, you’re going to have to work around Newt Gingrich’s adultery.

If you believe that Mormons don’t really qualify as Christian, you may find yourself struggling with Mitt Romney.“

 

“almost-dead.bz.cm” you are none of my concern. you are too stupid, trivial, meaningless, filthy, same with your Russian whore and her stupid husband. YOU THINK I”M ALMOST DEAD?; your life has been useless, full of dirts with your dirty heart/eyes, even messing up churches with your filthy, dirty eyes. The LORD will deal with you, what you have done. not me. Despite all cruel/brutal things you’ve done to make me disappear, why do you think i’m still here?

“In your righteousness, bring me out of trouble. In your unfailing love, silence my enemies; destroy all my foes, for I am your servant.” “The LORD has rewarded me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands in his sight. To the faithful you show yourself faithful, to the blameless you show yourself blameless, to the pure you show yourself pure, but to the crooked you show yourself shred. You saved the humble but bring low those whose eyes are haughty. You, O LORD, keep my lamp burning; my God turns my darkness into light…..You broaden the path beneath me, so that my ankles do not turn. I pursued my enemies and overtook them; I did not turn back till they were destroyed. I crushed them so that they could not rise; they fell beneath my feet. You armed me with strength for battle; you made my adversaries bow at my feet. You made my enemies turn their backs in flight, and I destroyed my foes. They cried for help, but there was no one to save them – to the LORD, but he did not answer. I beat them as fine as dust borne on the wind…“ “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”;  Psalms 18″ Thank G-.

The Additional Truth about US Inequality and Economy: “What’s Obama’s America’s Pacific Century Got to Do with Them?” – Global Trade Industry Perspective” (slightly revised)

Thesedays, the issue of “Inequality,” “Middle Class Crisis” has become an increasingly serious national issue over that of economy, being symbolized by the on-going outbursts of “Occupy Wall Street” protestors all over the nation.

Professor Robert Reich talked about six factors that have contributed to this US domestic condition of inequality, middle class crisis in his “The Truth about the US Economy”:

1. Flattening US wage regardless of economic growth over the last decades.

2. Increasing concentration of social wealth/ resources on super rich

3. Rich’s wealth-based political influence on government policies such as lowering taxes on super riches.

4. Huge budget deficits

5. Middle class divided

6. Anemic recovery

To complement Prof. Reich’s domestic perspective on this issue, I’d like to address the global perspective: the contribution of shifting global trade and industrial structure on shifting US job/employment structure and intensifying US inequality and middle class crisis. This global trade and industrial perspective also gives glimpse on

“What would be the Potential Impacts of President Obama’s latest introduction of the Era of America’s Pacific Century and the signing of US Free Trade Agreements including the one with South Korea on “Not Only Boosting the Devastated US Economy (if everything else works well)” “But Also Alleviating the US ill symptoms of Skewed Job/Employment Structure, Inequality, and Middle Class Crisis.”

Especially as China’s devaluation of currency is likely to help boost US exports to the country and the recent signing of US Free Trade Agreement with South Korea is going to boost US exports to the country starting from those of cars (if everything else works well),

“Pres. Obama’s Ushering of America’s Pacific Centry will contribute to creating more export-related middle class jobs in this country, help recover the health/balance of US economy and partially straighten up the skewed national employment structure toward finance, retailing, non-trade sector jobs by adding more export-related manufacturing jobs for middle class workers, and weaken income inequality and middle class crisis (unless Europe financial crisis further depresses the conditions of European and Asian economies).”

I post my previous blog post below because of its relevance with elaborating the points I made above: the shifted, skewed US job / employment structure over the last decades because of increasing globalization, global trade/industrial shifts, flight of traditional US manufacturing jobs to foreign countries of cheaper wages and increasing US outsourcing / imports, which, along with unbalanced domestic economic social structure of flattening wages, increasing concentration of social wealth on super rich that has increasingly exerted interest politics on US policy makings in their favor including lower taxes on them and loose business regulations and so on, have culminated to the current extreme income inequality and middle class crisis.

How to Fix the Economy III: The Big Picture

This was originally posted on 2011/07/23

The increasingly globalizing world economy, trade, and shift of industrialized and industrializing countries’ (US, Western Europe, more advanced Asian countries) manufacturing bases to cheaper producing countries of often less development have greatly contributed to the decreasing US jobs of low, medium value added  goods, the kind of jobs that have mainly supported US middle class. As a result of this trend of global market economy and industrialization in conjunction with the US market economy and industrial structure skewing toward increasingly relying on domestic consumption, the major source of US domestic employment has shifted away from the tradable sector (that includes manufacturing goods, engineering, computer design etc.) toward the non-tradable sector (that includes sectors such as construction, retailing, restaurants, hotel, etc.).” Dr. Spencer points out this US employment shift from the tradable sector to the non-tradable sector.

This global and US trend of industrialization and employment have (a) increasingly eliminated US middle class jobs that hire low-medium educated workers to produce low-medium value added products; (b) increased US jobs of producing high value added, tech/skill/information-intensive goods that hire highly educated workers (This trend appear to have contributed to the increasing concentration of US wealth/resources into the high-income group but minimal effect on creating and increasing the number of employment to replace the lost employment that has resulted from the shift of US manufacturing to foreign countries); and (c)  these shifts increased jobs in non-tradable sector that hire low-medium educated workers and pay lower wages with less fringe benefits, which have increasingly lowed the living quality and standard of middle class people in this country.

The combined effects of this global and domestic industrialization and employment trend, along with the troubles in US social, economic systems that have drained/shifted wealth/resources from the low/middle class to the high income class that had culminated to the US housing, health care, and financial markets crisis and the current great recession comprises current condition of anemic economic recovery and continuously high unemployment. What is needed is to fix the fundamental problems in the economic and social structure of US domestic and global market system?

Here, I repeat the points I made earlier: “If Everything Else goes well,” President Obama’s latest introduction of “the Era of America’s Pacific Century and the Signing of US Free Trade Agreements including the one with South Korea (along with the revaluation / weakening of Chinese Yuen that will make US exports to the country cheaper and Chinese exports to this country more expensive than before) will contribute to boosting US exports to these countries, creating  more export-related middle class manufacturing jobs in this country, helping recover the health / balance of US economy, partially straightening up the skewed national employment structure away from its increased dependence on finance, retailing, and non – manufacturing / non-trade sector jobs toward more manufacturing, middle class jobs, and softening income inequality and middle class crisis.

The prospect of domestic economic growth  by domestic demand may be anemic; but the prospect of US economic growth potential by exploring US global competitiveness and foreign demand for US exports, spurred by the latest White House Initiatives, has not been tested/proved yet and worthy options to explore (unless global financial crisis suddenly worsens it). If these WH Initiatives work well in future, the positive outcomes will “not only boost “the devastated US economy” but also alleviate the US symptoms of unbalanced employment structure by moving it more toward manufacturing, trade sectors that value middle class workers, and soften income Inequality and middle class crisis.

“The Real News on Jobs”: Who’s Blame for Job Losses and Gains?

There is good news that US job situation and economy. Private sector created 222,000 new jobs in Feb 2011 and the unemployment rate decreased to the lowest point of 8.9% since April 2009. These new jobs were dominantly created in the sectors of “factories, trucking companies, health care providers, construction firms, hotels and restaurants”. Economists say that the US economy needs 125,000 new jobs per month to maintain steady unemployment rate account for population growth, and 300,000 new jobs per month to get serious decrease in unemployment rate.(http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_economy)

On the other hand, increasing oil prices, which is expected to continue through this summer, due to the political crises in Middle East and recent firing of public workers from state local governments are expected to be counteracting forces against this recovery of job-economy-condition.

Professor Robert Reich points out the problem of wage gap regarding the recent job growth (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/the-real-news-on-jobs_b_831493.html):

“New jobs created since February 2010 (about 1.26 million) pay significantly lower wages than the jobs lost (8.4 million) between January 2008 and February 2010. While the biggest losses were higher-wage jobs paying an average of $19.05 to $31.40 an hour, the biggest gains have been lower-wage jobs paying an average of $9.03 to $12.91 an hour. In other words, the big news isn’t jobs. It’s wages.”

This deteriorating wage gap is understandable if we considered that the most recently job creating sectors have been “factories, trucking companies, health care providers, construction firms, hotels and restaurants” as mentioned above.

He points out:

Regarding Prof. Reich’s statement, “Conservative economists have it wrong. The underlying problem isn’t that so many Americans have priced themselves out of the global/high-tech labor market. It’s that they’re getting a smaller and smaller share of the pie.”

If we look into the detailed view of this “smaller smaller share of American worker’s pies, there are multi-layers of problems:

-The American Pie piece in Global Manufacturing Market is shrinking smaller and smaller.

-Inefficiences and bureacracies in most of US political, industrial entities and even labor unions have collectively contributed to the “dwindling American pies.” Loose government regulations on industries/business allowed these entities to take slices from workers’ pays and benefits, as seen in healthcare, housing/financial market messes, to bloat the wealth of high income groups while dwindling middle classes. But some part of labor also have their portion of blame for their shrinking pies: instead of focusing on working hard and increasing productivity to cut production costs and their global competitiveness, some of them (I am not talking about hard working workers. I praise them) has taken lazy approach of taking unheardly high paid vacation/sick days of almost one month out of twelve months while demanding high pays/benefits and protection of workers’ right, which seems to be inappropriate abuse of their right to protect their jobs. All these inefficiencies, bureaucracies from every entities sum up to “Slashed American Pie.” Everybody demand their right but don’t meet their performance requirements.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

always been waiting.

US Jobs, Trade: In Defense of WTO, NAFTA

This blog post is written in response to complains of US unemployment, manufacturing job losses, WTO, and NAFTA (Source: Robert Kuttner, Not Just Jobs — Good Jobs, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/not-just-jobs-good-jobs_b_706209.html)

Opening, liberalizing trade in forms of WTO, NAFTA, or other forms of multilateral or regional trade agreements has not been political agenda of one specific presidency, but the general trend of every administration since the mid-1970s, regardless of republican or democratic presidency. It may have incorporated the political influence of large corporations’ business and profit pursuits via international venues. But also not opening trade and global markets would have had the serious downside of collectively impoverishing American people by reducing their purchasing power of goods and consumption based on their income by, my guess is, one-third or more of their levels under trade. Because not-trading increases prices of products and reduces the choices of products available in the US markets, so we have to buy, consume less with same amount of income and feel more poor or less rich.

There is a reason that Wal-Mart has become the largest US and world corporation; because it has provided those choices of lower prices and more varieties of products through its multinational manufacturing or procurement of goods as much as the WTO, NAFTA or other trade agreement rules allow the corporation to do so. And Americans have “Crazily” enjoyed the “Benefits of Wal-Mart’s international operation while condemning evil Chinese or Mexican workers to take away American jobs. If people complain about WTO, NAFTA or other open trade issue and the consequent losses of US jobs, they should do it while abstainning themselves from going wal-mart or buying any cheap imported goods, or buying Japanese cars to reduce maintenance costs and reduce (the chances of losing workdays or income because of frequent car troubles before go to work) and bear with living with far less. They should put their acts together in belief; they cannot do A while pursuing conflicting B because of convenience.

Flattening American wages for decades. One of reasons is, the world is changing. In the Past, America was often the best or a leader in many manufacturing industries because the Europe was growing old and the Asia was not that much in the picture as it started its industrial infancy in 60’s and 70’s. Now, America is one of those growing old folks as Europe. We have to see where this country is standing in the world, to have correct understanding of the situation.

Opportunity for American Manufacturing, Jobs: The Case of Luxury Goods – Export?

In the beginning of Obama Administration, there had been voices that the US is in need of comprehensive analyses of US industrial competitiveness, strategic identification / development of industrial portfolio of which industries are viable, competitive, sustainable, or have growth potentials. At that time, there had also been some notion that “New Deal” style economic stimulus will not be viable, that “New Deal” failed as the New Deal construction boom of infrastructure for a few years (1933- 1937) went into another deep recession……

US market has been considered saturated as too many foreign and domestic competitors fight in a aging market while US producers have been defunctional in adapting to consumer demand but mainly surviving by manipulating US policies. Despite that, many giant US firms without competitiveness have still fallen, including labor intensive industries and auto industry.

However, despite worldwide recession, reportedly worldwide-widening income gap between rich and poor means means that there are sizable, lucrative foreign markets for US manufacturing of luxury goods, especially in countries like Brazil, Argentina, Korea, Asian tigers, India, China where riches are competing with those in this country. Rich people’s consumption are recession-resistant, meaning they will buy whatever they like, no matter it is recession or not. Do you remember the old news of some Koreans smuggling Viagra into Korea and got the whole country mad about those reckless, non-patriotic rich sons of etc. who care for those while the whole country suffers from financial madness?  On the other hand, US has unbeatable competitiveness in luxury goods that has cajoled the luxury lifestyles of American mass modern dynasties of rich and famous entrepreneurs, hollywood, basketball stars, etc. US entrepreneurs can strive to export these luxury goods to leisurely classes of foreign countries, such as bollywood (or dollywood? what was that) stars of India or you name them; foreign consumers can not buy American luxuries because they are not available either because of their governments’ import restriction or Americans don’t exports them.

“Obama, China, and American Jobs” by Robert Reich and Global Riches, Poors, and US Corporate Centralism

Former Secretary of Labor, Prof. Robert Reich discussed the limitation of China as a source of boosting US economy and jobs in his blog, “Obama, China, and Wishful Thinking About American Jobs,” at Huffington Post. He points out the limitation of China in boosting US economy and jobs as China’s high savings and investments rates and low consumption rates. These characteristics have been the typical profile of developing countries in the stage of high economic growth before reaching the stage of becoming advanced industrialized countries like US and Western European countries.

Here is one irony that I cannot avoid but noticing. Americans here expect Chinese people to help, save US economy and job conditions while they themselves (or we ourselves) keep damaging our own economy and jobs by scheming / manipulating domestic policies for political advantages or profit reasons that end up providing excessive profits to a few wealth group of people at the costs of screwing up the rest of people and the whole economy. And we look for the solution of our problem from a foreign country which also struggles with its own sets of problems including starving people and high unemployment in parts of the country? Does this make sense?

Regarding Prof. Reich’s blog, I wondered about other reasons of China being a limited source of US export market and boosting US economy:  (a) the huge gap between the riches and the poors in that country; (b) the limitation of US international marketing / business.

Regarding the huge income gap in China’s riches and poores as a source of limiting the country’s potential to help out US economy and job losses, Chinese riches live like the corresponding American riches. Chinese poors live like the correspnoding African poors; they starve like poor Africans. Rather than high Chinese savings and investment rates, I wonder whether it may be the huge income gap between Chinese riches and poores that cancel out the potential of Chinese consumers as a whole to help out US. Years ago, I heard from a Chinese that, in poor rural China, there were even families that owned only one pants for 7-8 family members. So, whenever family members had to go out, each member took turn to wear that pants while the rest of family members stay home naked or without wearing pants. Of course, this is a side story compared to their starvation. This is the story of “Rural China” where there are few industrial bases and job sources to feed people. This Rural China story may be comparable to those of US cities or towns that have declining or disappearing industrial bases, less and less jobs available, and increasing homelessness and starvations, such as the conditions of mining towns or cities of declining car manufacturing. On contrast, in “Urban China” booming industries and jobs exist to support Chinese people to increasingly live like people in richer countries.

In case of my country of origin, South Korea, in the 1980s and early 1990s, the young generations of riches in their 20s lived like the corresponding age group in US, attending universities, partying, drinking, killing times for ultimate entertainments and dating, enjoying such spoiled lifestyles and consumption patterns. In contrast, the young generations of poor Koreans, such as sons and daughters of poor farmers or factory workers, were often involved with underground student/labor/political organizations and demonstrations against the military governments and social/political issues, run away from smoke bombs and got arrested during street demonstrations, blacklisted by the government and often tortured by policies or military, maybe partially comparable story to those of young terrorists in Middle Eastern countries. What I am trying to say here is, the choices of lifestyles and consumption patterns seem to determined by the availability of money, not by nationality. The hierarchy of income levels and choices of lifestyles and consumption patterns within a country is exactly parallel to those across different countries regardless of nationality or different economic profiles of countries but more because of availability of money. I believe, human nature is same all over the world.

Regarding US firms’ limitation of exploring foreign consumers, although US has the finest business schools such as Harvard Business School etc., either many US corporates haven’t utilized these human resources or these human resources forgot what they learned in school after their graduation and run business based on what they feel like or their personalities. Despite  some exceptions, many US companies seem to only target domestic consumer and produce goods at corporate/executives’ convenience and needs (as shown by US auto industries), rather than considering / analyzing what consumers or competitors think and act. Some time ago, I read a review/rating of international travelers by, I think, French employees of tourism. They rated Japanese as most cordial and pleasant travelers, French most obnoxious (French travelers were even disliked by their only country fellows), and Americans being as the only nationality who insist to speak only English instead of learning the local languages even while traveling foreign countries. This attitude of American tourists may also explain the mentality of US corporate executives. The story of US corporate people in doing foreign business often sounds similar to that of American tourists. These American business people in foreign countries often don’t like to learn local languages and cultures. They prefer / expect the local people learn English to communicate with them. I may call it as “US Corporate Centralism” although there may be other terminologies given to this kind of behavioral, cultural pattern. Instead of providing goods that fit to the tastes, sizes, and consumption patterns of people in foreign countries, US corporates expect foreign consumers to adjust, adapt to the ways of American-made goods that US corporates produce and provide as they like.

Along with the role of exchange rates between China and US (which has been another huge issue between two countries over a decade) and China’s country profile, this American style of doing foreign business has been and may continue to be the major barrier of selling American goods in foreign countries. In the past, there had been strong, high demand for American goods all over the world. In South Korea, for example, Korean mothers got crazy to rush to OshKosh clothing stores in Korea if they had heard about those stores’ sales advertizements. Because those OshKosh children clothings were sold in Korea at 200%-300% higher prices than the original US prices and not easily available there, if those clothing store had had sales, their were crowds of mothers around those stores and many people behind the crowd even couldn’t look at the products and just wait until somebody toss behind some unwanted products. That’s what I heard from Korean mothers. US products have often meant status symbols for many consumers in developing countries because of the image of US as world super power and American products were not easily available there. Foreign people wished to have American products to show up to their friends and neighbors, but they couldn’t find them. US corporates probably didn’t know that because they were not interested in foreign markets and didn’t do market research, mainly serving US consumers with products that the corporate people like to produce. Without solving visible barriers in engaging in international business, are we supposed to keep talking about why Chinese consumers would not really help US economy and unemployment problem?

Mr. Reich’s Oroginal Article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/obama-china-and-wishful-t_b_361492.html