Poverty, Shrinking Workforce, and Low-Skill Workers: A National Crisis
In 2011, the political, social, and economic fabric of our nation stretched a little too far. Will 2012 be the year the seams burst?
For starters, we have a broke, broken, polarized, and dysfunctional government, and that saga will play out on center stage in election year 2012. The people are polarized as well. However, one issue has upwards of 70% of Americans in total agreement — our nation is headed on the wrong track. Hard to argue: no nation or empire in the history of the world has ever been burdened with $15 trillion in debt. I am known to be an optimist, but reviewing the statistics that reveal the sorry state of our nation, I find myself joining the chorus of voters who believe national decline can only be managed but not avoided.
Many Americans, especially Republicans, think the 2012 election is our last chance to turn our ship of state around, but it may already be too late. For exactly how to turn the ship around and who will be captain will cause more polarization, more dysfunction, and potential for upheaval. Per Bob Dylan: “When you ain’t got nothin’, you got nothin’ to lose.” Some facts supporting that statement:
Half of All Americans Are Poor or Low-Income
According to the latest census data, 146.4 million Americans, or 48% of the population, either fall below the poverty line or are in the low-income category.
Of that number, 97.3 million are considered low-income, while 49.1 million are poor. But the fact that should be of greatest concern to all Americans in regards to our future economic well being: 57% of all children are either poor or low-income.
Unless there is some radical change, the national trend towards a have vs. have-not society is already set in stone. Expect class warfare to grow and government entitlement battles to become even more vicious. There is no escaping that income inequality, on a scale that we have never seen before, will have a profoundly negative effect on our traditional American way of life. A child born into poverty has fewer chances to move into the middle class given all the disadvantages poverty heaps on a young life, both mentally and physically.
Census data from 2010 reveals that Hispanics account for 73% of our nation’s poor, and they are the largest and fastest growing minority demographic, comprising 16.3% of the population. Hispanic growth increased 43% from 2000 to 2010.
Therefore, a massive public/private initiative must be developed to help lift Hispanics into the middle class or the U.S. will eventually cease to be a top tier nation. Our standing in the world economy is directly tied to Hispanic upward mobility.
The American Workforce Is Shrinking
According to USA Today, in 2010 the share of the population that had a job fell to 45.4%, down from a peak of 49.3% in 2000 — the lowest percentage of workers since 1983. This downward percentage translates into 27 million more non-working adults. Looking at male workers only, 66.8% had jobs, the lowest on record. Obviously this downward trend must be reversed, or national decline is inevitable.
High-Skilled Jobs and Low-Skilled Workers
This is a problem — closer to a crisis — that few of our national leaders bother to discuss. Too many high-skilled high-paying jobs are going unfilled. Met any unemployed computer engineers lately? Not likely you will.
Jobs, jobs, jobs may be the battle cry of the 2012 election but it is skills, skills, skills that are the real problem. Moreover, the lack of high-tech skills in our working population is impeding our future economic growth.
When I graduated from high school in the early ’70s, men who did not go to college often became auto mechanics. That path is not as easy anymore. Today, mechanics are highly paid and sought after because they require extensive computer training and certification to work on cars that have become computers on wheels.
How does our economy create low-skilled but adequate wage jobs for the growing number of low-skilled or no-skilled American workers? Solving that dilemma is the key to lifting half of our population out of poverty.
Innovative programs must be developed to help create a new middle class to supplement the current one that is shrinking fast. If we are unable to do that, then continued decline is the economic forecast for 2012 and beyond.
Ms. Adams,
I call bullshit on the “50% of Americans are Poor.” This is merely a new tool created by the Obama Administration and the Census Bureau to game the numbers.
http://blog.heritage.org/2011/12/21/census-bureau-says-half-of-americans-are-poor-think-again/
The Census Bureau’s new poverty measure is another tool in President Obama’s endless quest to “spread the wealth.” Although the media portray it as a more accurate measurement of poverty, in reality it deliberately severs all connection between “poverty” and actual deprivation.
The new measure places income thresholds for poverty on a built-in escalator that rises automatically in direct proportion to any improvement in the living standards of the average American. So even if the real income of every single American were to double, the new measure would show no drop in poverty because the income thresholds also would double.
This new system measures “inequality,” not “poverty.”
http://blog.heritage.org/2011/11/07/poverty-measure-a-gimmick-to-equalize-incomes/
I could not agree more. I grew up during the depression and my college educated engineer father could not find work after the company he worked for went bankrupt. We had to move in with my grandparents on their farm in Mississippi. If we had not been able to raise our food, we would have starved. I do not know how city dwellers survived. There were no government handouts in those days. That is povety. What we are calling living in povety today are citizens who have cell phones, flat screen TVs, cars, food stamps, Section 8 housing, etc. They don’t know what it is like to have to be responsible for yourself and your family.
Umm…during the Depression government assistance was called being on the “dole” perhaps coming from people being doled out bricks of cheese and butter etc. from charities and the government during the Depression. Did you ever hear of the time when the government started huge projects building roads bridges and dams in order to employ workers? umm…It was called the New Deal.
Then along came the War employing many of the unemployed young people who where proud to serve their country, because many of the young are looking for a meaning to all this bullsh!t and a chance to make a difference, needed a job most of all to help feed their family. Joining the war effort meant a job and a paycheck and a chance to serve.
We saw that during this most recent war where the young joined the military in great numbers to serve and to earn a paycheck. Now in your minds they are unskilled and unable to do what it takes to continue maintaining this country and keeping it strong. I say “NUTS!”
Don’t spread the illusion that preceding generations didn’t need or use assistance in order to survive and prosper. They did yet still had the fortitude, when given the chance, to become the backbone of this country time and time again.
P.S. It’s not unheard of for farmers to get assistance from the government.
I suspect you are right, but more importantly the message that 40 years of poverty abatement measures in this country at huge expense to the taxpayers has resulted in more poverty rather than substantially less would indicate that poverty abatement measures should be abandoned because they are obviously miserable failures. If there was less poverty in 1965 than in 2005 when in 1965 there were very few government programs to help the working poor into the middle class and that negligence resulted in lower levels of poverty than we have today, why should we continue with our current model?
“Therefore, a massive public/private initiative must be developed to help lift Hispanics into the middle class or the U.S. will eventually cease to be a top tier nation. Our standing in the world economy is directly tied to Hispanic upward mobility.” We had a massive public effort to lifts blacks out of poverty. Now this??? I don’t think so. Did it ever occur to you that these people are being allowed to come here in droves to provide an excuse for a “massive public effort” which is just another word for socialism without end? Keep them out of this country. No more import of unskilled and the underclass. Change the immigration requirements. It’s just as simple as that. Shut down the hordes coming here so that those here can find work. No more Work Visas so that Americans are not replaced by cheap labor. Our immigration and trade policies have contributed to this mess. Money spent “lifting people out of poverty” impoverishes ALL OF US.
Spot on!! Another government program from a government how many trillions in debt?
We never wanted this mess. We meaning the average American. What we have now is a mighty coalition of those wanting cheap labor, those wanting votes, those looking to create another pasty class to foment more left wing revolution, and those “hispanic” representatives pushing for this because they are racist, chauvinistic, and ethnic supremacists. Have you heard any of these “leaders” bellowing for the rights of any other immigrant group? To force people to pay for anything they expressly objected to is grotesquely immoral and unjust. That is the true definition of “social injustice”. To take money from some to support or elevate anyone else is a gross violation of our civil rights, let alone an outrageous violation of our protections under the fifth amendment: to confiscate private property without just compensation. Socialism is a violation of our rights under the Bill of Rights. Always has been but since the days of FDR when he fought mightily to destroy the old Republic and replace it with a soft bellied fascism, all Americans who have seen their property (wages) confiscated to be handed out to others have been violated, abused, and figuratively raped. Now we are being told to finance more of what we abjure? Why? Because we will be afraid of being called names? Call me a name. I don’t give a rat’s rear end. Just keep your filthy hands off my property.
This is a misunderstanding of the article’s meaning. America likes having an existing underclass that does the menial work for the uberclasses. Keeping a ‘free’ upper/uber class means keeping that separation strong, with money on their side and minimum wage for most employees. When this becomes entrenched in a nation, either it results in permanent underclasses or some kind of revolution to remove power from the uber-few. This may not address the religious or ethical reasons for the problem, and if it does not adequately do so for those who succeed in changing the foundation of power, they are condemned to repeating the process with their friends as the new uberpeople, taking advantage of the new underclass.
One of the reasons Rome failed was their over dependence on “immigrant” labor and mercenaries in the military. Rome tried to keep the people happy with “bread and circuses” and found out, although they didn’t put it this way, that pretty soon they no longer had other peoples’ money to spend.
Nice myth, fits the Catholic mythology as transmitted by Gibbon and his progeny, but it really didn’t happen that way. South of the Rhine and east of the Caucausus, the barbarians were pretty much as Roman as the Romans and largely industrious and prosperous up until very near the end. When the Vandals quit Spain for North Africa, they dramatically damaged the Roman economy by cutting off both a major source of foodstuffs and tax revenue. The Huns pushed the Goths into the Empire and internecine rivalry, incompetence, and parsimony allowed them to rampage for awhile but the Empire largely absorbed the blow while at the same time dealing with the menace of the other and largely ignored major imperial power, the Sassanian Persians. Even the Huns were repulsed but by that time Imperial resources were so drained and the loss of North Africa could not be made good, and the Empire was broke. There was still wealth, life went on, but large landholders, both Roman and Barbarian, had more resources than did the faltering Empire and the Empire by the 500s needed the landholders more than the landholders needed them. Imperial control didn’t fall as the myth posits, it just faded away, lasting longer in some places than others and Roman-style life lived on for a very long time in some places in Europe, and for another thousand years in the Eastern Empire.
West of the Caucasus, dammit. Proof, I must learn to proof better!
You are right that the middle class is shrinking and the quality of the workforce is in rapid decline. The cause of low income is the collapse of marriage and the family. This cultural shift was well underway before globalization and the technological developments now driving the economy. A key function of the state is to promote the character of its people. Our governing elites have done the opposite.
Sir, you got it exactly right. Before I retired, I worked as a substance abuse counselor with low income people. There are some single parents who display heroic qualities and their kids come out OK. But for the most part, single parent families are factories that produce people who take far more from society than they give back. A lack of fathers and a surplus of sperm donors will be the doom of this country
I agree. Quite a few studies have documented the need for two-parent families, but only recently have there been studies that confirm conventional wisdom that not only can two live cheaper than one, they are more successful, as well. In the US, marriage is rapidly becoming the province of the upper- and middle-class. Rick Santorum once said that you can’t separate social and fiscal conservatism, and he’s right. Our first “safety net” should be our families, but when those are falling apart, people turn to the state- never realizing the great irony that it was the state’s policies that replaced and diminished the family in the first place.
But the so-called “think tanks” and academic circles that contribute to domestic policy making will never, ever admit that good old family values are, for most people, the paving bricks on the road to economic success.
Oh, but that’s not politically correct. I’ve lost count of the number of acquaintances of mine – both Progressive and Libertarian – that condemn Santorum for what he said, regardless of the actual facts.
A good article and a timely one. There is one factor at work though that the author didn’t mention. There are quite a few highly skilled people that would like to work but the jobs mean relocation and the job seekers are saddled with an underwater mortgage that they can’t get rid of. That means that they have the choice to declare bankruptcy or move and be saddled with two mortgages. Not an attractive choice since having a bankruptcy on ones record can preclude getting hired. This was the position of a friend of mine a few years ago. Fortunately he was able to get rid of his house because it was near the DC area and the influx of people going to work for the Obama administration made for a little bit of a seller’s market. Not so easy to do in Phoenix, Las Vegas, Chicago, Orlando, etc.
This article is not about immigration- the writer can be referring to hispanic citizens – it is about the economy and loss of good jobs for people who come out of high school or even a fine arts college education and can no longer find good paying jobs.
There would be more room for citizens in the economy if illegals didn’t crowd them out.
Yes it is about immigration. Latino Americans are for the most part, the “anchor babies” of illegal immigrants. Having lived in 3 different border states, I can tell you that the immigrants believe that there is some magic that comes along with that birth certificate. It goes beyond the obvious that their deportation is less likely if they have citizen children. They actually think that there are great paying jobs available even for HS dropouts if you just have that all important legal documentation. In other words, they think the US is still like it was in the 1960′s. Now the “anchor babies” of the 1990′s are reaching adulthood and they are finding that more than 1/3 of them cannot find jobs. The net migration out of Mexico and Central America in the 90′s was about 1/4 of what it was during the past decade. What will happen to all these freshly minted US citizens??? We have known for 30 years that low skilled jobs were declining in this country. Unfortunately, the immigrants did not know this.
It is indeed about immigration and race. You cannot ignore these problems by not taking into account 90% of legal immigrants in the last 10 years are minorities. That is not including illegal immigration which is a massive stream. These people are coming from countries which are failures and into a country where gov’t policy itself assumes all minority failure is due to racism. Since that is not true, the failure never stops and the machine just goes on and on.
Take a look at the “Education” system. That is the key.
“According to the latest census data, 146.4 million Americans, or 48% of the population, either fall below the poverty line or are in the low-income category.”
You may want to be careful with that data.
1) Do they count income from government assistance?
2) Do they define the poverty line or low-income in terms of the percentage of the population?
You have a point about the numbers in isolation, but politically, the numbers stripped of government assistance are more important.
The prevailing mindset among those in the low-income / poor segments of the economy is victimist and envy-ridden. Such persons are a very hard sell for any proposition about shrinking government and reducing its interventions into America’s economy.
I laugh every time I hear this statement that these immigrants are here so we must spend billions of dollars feeding, education, housing, and providing medical care. The first time I heard that was over 25 years ago. We did exactly that and so of course MILLIONS more came since we were so gracious about it.
I just read that Mexico is trying to get its estimated 11.7 million voters who “live abroad” back to Mexico to vote in upcoming elections. It is estimated that 65% of our illegal immigrant population is Mexican. That makes the number of illegal immigrants closer to 18 million than the often mentioned 9-11 million. The reason poverty keeps growing in spite of increased taxpayer spending on anti-poverty measures might just be because we continue to import far more unskilled workers than we have jobs for. We have this notion in this country that it is still 1960 and crops are hand picked. We have closer to 1.5 million seasonal agricultural jobs in this country. We do not no nor have we ever needed 18 million people to pick crops.
We have been hearing how there would be no jobs for high school dropouts for 30 years. That would appear to be true since unemployment is nearly 20% for all workers with just a HS diploma, and over 30% for those under 30 with just a HS diploma. So why then are we not expecting at least 1/2 of the immigrants (who let themselves into the country over the past 2 decades)return to their home countries? There should be a points system just like EVERY other developed country. Britain is currently debating which legal immigrants they are going to send back to their home countries. In spite of being parents of US citizens, they must go home. That is what Canada requires and does anyone think they are “human rights violators”?
“Poverty, Shrinking Workforce, and Low-Skill Workers: A National Crisis”
Crisis, or strategy?
Who benefits?
“Crisis, or strategy”.
We have long since been given the answer when Rahm told us to “never let a crisis go to waste”. Crisis as a strategy is the formula. Obama and his ilk hate George W. for an abundance of things but the one that must irritate them the most is the fact that “W” lays claim to the “Mission Accomplished” statement. Such a brief an apt slogan for Obama and the Democrat party when the American economy finally tanks and the socialist utopian dream kicks in. Let’s see now. Maybe we can come up with another catchy phrase.
Yes, but its all by design; not happenstance. Both parties have dumbed down the Constitution to such a low level that practically no one in the law making class even consults it. So we’re living with the anything goes mentality. Want welfare, SNAP, Housing, college degrees, social security, unemployment benefits, medical benefits etal and the political class delivers.
And the unions have wrecked not only many businesses, but also the education system. We used to turn out pretty good students. Many kids in Detroit can not read or write, but they know how to deal drugs, get on the gov’ment dole, buy guns, and make babies.
The anything goes is also their stewardship of citizenship. They voted in dual citizenship. So now we have dual citizens figuring out which country will give them the best deal. How’s does that work out if we had to go to war against the “other” country? And what does that do to allegience to the U.S. Now we let in anybody from anywhere (even terrorists) by not watching the border. They may be carrying diseases, bombs, or guns but are unchecked. And they sign up for benefits. And get “free” education for their kids and they don’t have to bother to learn English.
So while citizens are prodded, poked and harrassed by reams of laws, regulations and rules, illegal aliens are showered with rights, benefits, and kid gloves and they commit crimes are are let go.
The unspoken truth is that many “poor” sucking up various welfare programs are better off than many people working at the lower rungs. Look under the hood of the car (so to speak) and you will find that these people own cars, microwaves, TV’s, cell phones and all the modern conveniences. They are NOT poor in material goods, but poor “in spirit”.
3 points:
1) As Charles Williams noted in his post, the primary cause (not the ONLY cause) of any low income is single parent households.
2) What we think of as poverty (no indoor plumbing, not enough calories, not enough clothes) is virtually non-existent in the US. From a Heritage study “the overwhelming majority of the poor have air conditioning, cable TV, and a host of other modern amenities. They are well housed, have an adequate and reasonably steady supply of food, and have met their other basic needs, including medical care. Some poor Americans do experience significant hardships, including temporary food shortages or inadequate housing, but these individuals are a minority within the overall poverty population”
How poor is somebody if they have cable and air conditioning? My grandparents did not have either of those things.
3) What is a Hispanic? One parent born in a hispanic country? One grandparent, two grandparents? Anybody, and I mean anybody can claim to be a hispanic. For college admission purposes, my kids will claim to be hispanics as several generations ago one of their ancestors was born in Spain.
Census data from 2010 reveals that Hispanics account for 73% of our nation’s poor, and they are the largest and fastest growing minority demographic, comprising 16.3% of the population.
Hmm, and whose fault is that, I wonder? Could it be 40+ years of immigration policies that appear to favor Hispanics, coupled with the fact that the sheer bulk of them arrive here with no skills that might actually get them hired into good paying jobs?
all the talk about voting out the marxist and voting in the conservatives will only slow or mitigate the American decline.
what is required to return to the Constitution and freedom of the individual is to recover the education system.
the marxists are the ones doing the educating and have been for generations.
things cannot get better without the abolishment of the dept. of education and a return to teaching the basics. no social justice ….no bullsh!t.
As a retired teacher, I agree completely. During the 35 years I taught, I saw standards being dropped so everyone could experience improved “self-esteem.” While visiting in Californnia over Christmas I heard of a high school which had multiple valadictorians. Student must be taught the basics, of course, or they won’t be able to finish school without social promotions. But, they also MUST be taught American History (including our brave men and women who fought to keep us free), the Constitution, Civics. They must be held to a standard. I could go on and on, but these things are not being taught today. Have you seen a reporter interviewing young (and not-so-young) people on the street and they could not tell him who was vice president, let alone secretary of state, etc. At a risk of being called “racist” I must say…if you do not know who the current VP is, you should not be allowed to vote. An uninformed vote is worse than no vote. I voted in a local election recently where I knew nothing about the judges running for judgeships. So, I did not vote for any of them.
Another thing we need in education is have trade schools again. I heard some states are starting to do this. When I went to high school we had a choice of a trade school or a college prep school. In a trade school students learned a practical trade to support themselves. Everyone should not go to college. Here they learned plumbing, woodworking, auto mechanics, etc. Unfortunately today autos are so computer driven, I am not sure a trade school could cover all that. But maybe it could, I don’t know. But there are many more trades to learn. People can learn to install alarm systems, repair air conditions, etc., these are things we did not even have when I was in high school. It is my conviction that we would have fewer high school dropouts if they could see some value in what they were having to study. Also with trade schools they could co-op where they worked part-time using the skill they were learning. Then they could see it leading to a job.
You know we had these same discussions back in the 30s–too many people, too few jobs. Back then people brought forth radical ideas like the Townsend Plan which, as I remember, was abour limiting hours of work so that two people would do one job.
If you think about it, everything we’ve done for the past 20 years has been the reverse of what we SHOULD DO. We have imported poverty and even more competition for the ever-lessening low skill jobs by having bna open border and then providing medical care and schools for the illegals who flood our borders. Both parties have been equally delinquent–different reasons but end result is same. Like we didn’t have enough poor of our own? Import more??
Passing NAFTA was the beginning of disastrous move off shore of businesses that had been doing well until NAFTA–it enabled (almost invited) American companies to move of shore. And later Congress (especially Republicans in this case) passed all kinds of tax loopholes literally BRIBING Amercan companies to move off shore. They’ve piled up all that money off shore and now they want a no-tax on it to bring it home! Some patriots!
We reward large families; punish small or childless couples.
Our welfare laws encourage single-family motherhood and absentee fathers.
We reward the kind of things the rich do with money (earn their income from investments) and punish the kind of things most people do with money (they earn it from wages and that’s the most taxed income of all).
Businersses can deduct their expenses doing business; ordinary people can’t deduct their expenses of ordinary living.
We’ve given away sovereignty by the bushel with NAFTA, GATT and the WTO while bemoaning the far less infringement on our sovereignty caused by the United Nations. We’ve allowed our economy to be at the mercy of multi-national corporations who, by definition, are amoral (bottom line is only criteria they worship), play always at the push-the-envelope edge of legality (can always form another corporation to confuse things), and have no patriotism whatever.
Things corporations do today–sell and deal with America’s enemies–were the topic of plays and novels in WWI and WWII. Today, no one is even outraged at the sometimes anti-American actions of so-called “American” corporations.
And so it goes.
Only candidate I will vote for this time around is BUDDY ROEMER. He’s the only one who gets what so-called “free” trade and passing NAFTA has done to America. It has destroyed our economy.
Individuals do get living expenses – called personal exemptions and standard/itemize/education/child care deductions. They then get refundable credits for having children (child credit), and low income(EITC). About 50% of tax payers pay no federal income taxes – get witholding back, remnants of any credits and in most cases the actual transfer to them (free money) pays for their FICA. FICA goes into a fund, the gov borrows it to pay back to those who paid it – and later has to pay out the benefits but has no money so has to borrow again to fix that problem – nice!
U-TELL-THE-TRUTH MR. PRESIDENT
To discredit Obama’s performance on the economy the Republican nominee must run his campaign on honest unemployment numbers and pledge to change the methodology back to pre-1994 once in office when disappointed workers were counted in the statistics.
Clink my name ApolloSpeaks to read my piece, Keeping Obama Honest About Unemployment Reality at my top, widely linked TownHall blog.
I meant DISCOURAGED workers…
I disagree the problems you describe will be impacted one way or the other by the coming Presidential elections or even a changed congress.
America’s problems stem from politically correct bureaucracies steeped in race-based Critical Pedagogy where one’s social status and even morality are based on perceived oppression.
Bureaucracies like the Dept. of Education and immigration policy plough on disconnected from real-time management that adjusts according to need. Non-gov’t groups like La Raza, the NAACP and ACORN have their agendas with millions of dollars in gov’t grants. Our unemployment could soar to 20% and they’d still not adjust immigration numbers; they have not done so in Britain with 17 year high unemployment.
We are undone by a machine that will take years if not decades to unravel and there is no sign of this happening. As long as it is believed by our own gov’t that whites are endemic racists and that minority failure is always due to racism nothing will change.
I think Obama has plans for those US Census ”poverty” figures.
How can a tiny bit below our median income in America equal ”poor and near-poor?”
It can only be true on paper.
Obama plans to allow other income – not included presently as income – to count as income in the last few weeks before the Nov. 2012 election.
With that one adjustment Obama will appear to lift millions of Americans out of poverty.
Of course no real change will have happened.
It is just a switch in definitions.
Myra Adams would do well to note what a phony stat our present ”poverty” figures are.
Good point about the poverty stat. That data wwas a joke even before the Marxist in Chief decided to make the concept into a tub thumper.
The poorest person in the USA would be a 1%’er in many other countries around the world, and in 99% of all the human cultures that have ever existed. When paying for drugs isn’t the big dilemma of America’s poor, I’ll let my heart bleed for them as a “class” rather than doing what I can for individuals who I know have been dealt a bad hand instead of biting the hand that fed them.
And it’s quite informative that Myra, PJM’s very own mainline to the Republican Ruling Class, chooses to accept the marxist spin about poverty, hook, line and sinker.
The Hispanic population has grown due to an illegal alien invasion. It is but one part of a full court press to weaken America. Throw in moon god worshipers in the millions, debt to the CHICOMMS, moving work overseas, are but a few of the examples to help bring the United States in line with a global Marxist agenda.
The next thing you know, our own government will attack States for trying to defend themselves from illegal aliens, and selling weapons to Mexican drug Cartels only to print it is being done by middle Americans clinging to their weapons, and Bibles.
National decline can be avoided unfortunately the programs required to do so are politically and socially unacceptable at the moment.
1) A flat tax of 1% of Global consolidated revenue, no deductions, everyone pays
2) Repeal the income tax and close then fire the IRS.
3) Disband then fire everyone in the following departments – Energy, Commerce, Education, Homeland Security and the TSA, EPA and Housing.
4) Cut 25% out of Defense and end the campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq today. Close 95% of our overseas bases today.
5) Term limits on Congress 2 terms then lifetime ban.
6) Bailouts carry the death penalty by firing squad, it’s treason.
7) Switch to a 100% user pays medical system via Health Savings accounts with disaster coverage with a $15,000 deductible.
8)Illegal immigrants and their children get NOTHING. If it means they starve or die due to lack of food/medical care, life is tough in Gods cruel kingdom, go back to Mexico or your home country.
You would need to implement ALL of the programs above. Now many votes would that package gather I wonder? 100 votes, 1000 maybe?
The alternative is economic collapse ala 1932 and the net worth of 95% of Americans goes straight to zero (or negative if you hold a mortgage)and stays there for at least 5-10 years, mass starvation is unlikely but martial law and the summary executions they bring are a certainly. 50/50 on full blown civil war as Washington is assigned the blame and some states declare their independence from the Union and renounce the debt as illegitimate.
You will not hear the truth in the LSM. So, I will shine the light of truth to the biggest threat to all of US. What if Washington wanted to EAT ALL OF THE RICH here in the U.S.?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=661pi6K-8WQ&fe…
With the sheer numbers of poor flooding over our southern border, it would be more descriptive to call them refugees than illegal immigrants. The very poorest and also most criminal element are the ones who are fleeing the failed state that is Mexico. Mexico is exporting its problems to the US. Why on earth do we allow billions of dollars to be sent back to Mexico by the illegals? That massive transfer of money could easily be stopped.
Mexico should be a rich country, just like Russia ought to be a rich country. They have many resources, including, in Mexico’s case, excellent coastal ports. It is the culture that accounts for the corruption of the Mexican government and the resulting poverty.
That culture is what the illegals bring with them. It is a culture completely uninformed about basic American ideas of meritocracy and equal opportunity. The crippled educational system insures that they will persist in their ignorance of American history. They self-identify as Mexicans, yet soak up the freebies. Somehow, the fact that they don’t want to go back to Mexico never strikes them as contradictory.
They are often lawless and here simply to take whatever they can get from America. There is a website that contains nothing but names and short bios of American citizens who have been killed, usually by car accidents, by illegal Mexicans. It is lengthy, to say the least, sorry I have lost track of the name of the website.
If they came here and started inventing useful stuff and starting businesses that employed Americans, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, right?
The problem stems from the culture they bring with them, and they are not acquiring the American culture. Sadly, many American children aren’t acquiring it, either, and these form the useful idiotocracy on display at OWS.
I couldn’t care less what the racial majority of the future citizens of the United States might be, as long as they know what it is to be American. Being American has never been a matter of race or tribe or ancestors or social standing. For Mexico, “la raza” really matters. It is a foreign culture. We must insist that when people come here, they become American.
Talk to any Elite Liberal, School Teacher, Government Employee, College Professor, State Employee, Trust Fund Wealthly,
All of them think they will not be effected with the demise of the American Middle Class. They are all so isolated from every day contact of the Middle Class, they just don’t know any better.
ar
Just listen to the TV Media Talking Heads and Politiciana, talk about lost.
These people have never seen a Factory or Machine Shop, worked on a car or do home plumbing .
Take the Elite Liberal Left and team them up with the unemployable Minority and uneducated White, and they may have a Voting Majority in 2012. That appears to be the Obama relection plan.
I know the author has good intentions, but having/thinking government do ANYTHING to improve economic conditions is a fool’s errand.
Accountability of illegal aliens & sometimes up to ~4th generation aliens who are LEGALLY able to apply for citizen status though ~85% don’t – get rid of ‘em by applying our ignored immigration laws already on the books and the new state laws cropping up because the Fed gov’t sucks.
-Fine, imprison companies employing illegal aliens.
-Imprison/and or deport illegal aliens for more times than not they’re possessing a fake/stolen SSN, illegally obtained DL/POS car that won’t pass SMOG test, taxpayer provided Section 8 Housing, welfare/food stamps, kids in school their parents pay nothing most instances for said services etc etc.,
-Reword the 14th Amendment. Our country’s had its fill of ‘multiculturalism’ failures of anchor babies. Whereas many become ‘upstanding’ gang members, teen daddy’s/teen mommy’s, thief’s, drug dealers etc.,
-Have REAL people, not the Black Caucus ‘help’ the Black communities. 73% of Black children are born to single Black mother’s.. that’s disgusting. Many of these children go the same route as 14th Amendment abusing children. It’s disheartening and tiresome seeing career 2nd, 3rd generation + welfare mother’s with 3, 4 6 kids in tow when living near D.C.
Remove the DoEd (as well as our UN monies/charter, TSA, DoE, EPA etc.,) from public education altogether and slowly strip Union from said education (The NEA and other educational unions bite the big one). Uhabam’s DoE top dog Arte Duncan has NEVER been a teacher. He’s your typical Chicago hustler. Yet there he is..
There’s infinitely more..
Therefore, a massive public/private initiative must be developed to help lift Hispanics into the middle class or the U.S. will eventually cease to be a top tier nation.
Not correct. There were no “massive initiatives” to bring the Germans, the Irish, the Italians or any other group of immigrants after the original English settlers into the middle class. All that is needed is opportunity and the Hispanics will either raise themselves or settle in at the lowest rungs until they can. The problem in this country is that our Progressive “living wage” and minimum wage laws, not to mention the thousand-and-one other taxes, fees, and regulations that govern employment here, have priced skilled labor out of the market. Companies don’t move overseas simply because the wages are cheaper, they move because the labor costs more than it earns. The unions have simply priced themselves, or rather their members, out of the marketplace. Time after time, I have heard stories of people that want to start companies, make products, or expand existing businesses, only to run the numbers and say “I can’t afford to hire anyone.”
Excellent! Friday’s 8.5% unemployment rate and 200K Christmas jobs were trumpeted as great news. But the real news is what you report in your column.
“Therefore, a massive public/private initiative must be developed to help lift Hispanics into the middle class or the U.S. will eventually cease to be a top tier nation. Our standing in the world economy is directly tied to Hispanic upward mobility.”
Not surprising Myra goes for the Big Government solution given how she has been in the tank for Romney from Day 1. Perhaps Myra got some inside information on Romney’s 1st Big Government initiative if he takes office. My question how are you going to change a culture that has never valued education, patience or discipline.
I’ll give you a B- for good intentions Myra, but as a ‘mansession’ vet now living in Phoenix, I have heard this all before. Like in Jimmy Carters 1st term. In many ways – as exemplified by the good holiday cheer that trumpets Chicago Barry as having us ‘trending’ back to MSM idea of good times – the major difference between living through a second Carter term with an an Affirmative Action dolt now is that the Dem Party via Obama is packed with ideologues even more left than anything imagined in ’77-’80.
I take issue not only with your assertion via Census data but esspecially your assumptions subsequently drawn. Back when it was Carter in the late seventies you had Lester Turow eliciting gloom and doom managed decline rather than Paul Krugman – and likewise instead of Bloomberg news it was James Fallows extolling how the Japanese were about to swallow hole the American economy and spit it out as a second rate england by the 90′s. (Today of course it is China)
I lived through the first delcaration of the end of the American century as a young man. Again I emphatically reject your theory now in middle age, despite how earnestly you wring your keypad over the issues, and how difficult finding work is for those like myself.
It’s crap now as it was crap then.
Even the HISPANIC community sees how craven Obama is as nothing more than a lying oppertunist when it comes to immigration – a fact even alluded to here at PJ Media by the resident Marxist ST Ruben of San Diego. The most damaged by unchecked illegal immigration isn’t poor and low skilled whites or blacks – it’s fellow Hispanics – particularly those who have legally immigrated and assimilated.
As for the failure to fill the highest skilled jobs? By and large we still have the greatest research universities. Actual immigration reform would mean closing down the border to low skilled Hispanics – and decoupling being held hostage to Mexico and others beneath them geographically – and selectively importing the talent wanted and needed.
This is not impossible – IT ISN’T REALLY EVEN THAT HARD!
Politics sells it as ‘complex.’ It’s not. And Americans are way ahead of the professional pols who still pine for ‘status quo.’
Where we are failing and falling behind the rest of the world is k-12; Again cui bono? Who benefits and why. It’s no puzzle.
You fail to mention the great outcome of the 80′s that lifted the country out of the Democrats slavish devotion to all things statist. It wasn’t a government program – although it was only possible through adopting supply side economics and tax reform.
And men like me – some college (many with NO COLLEGE experience) – FOUND OUR WAY BACK TO EMPLOYMENT BECAUSE OF IT! It was the new ‘labor movement’ of Temp Employment. It wasn’t just the Earn Income Tax Credit that made the eventual welfare refrom under Gingrich/Clinton possible.
Nothing succeeded like Temp employment.
It was the ability first for manufacturing – and eventually just about any industry you can think of – to remain competitive globally by hiring – sometimes long term (ie RUNNING THEIR BUSINESS PERMANETLY THROUGH SUCH FIRMS)-
through Manpower or some replicant.
It wasn’t some pernicious rich vs poor ‘class warfare’ behind it then nor is it now.
Overwhelmingly the reasons why were hard cold economics; most to defer or eliminate the costs (making our firms uncomptetitive) of medical.
All across the country in state after state you had historic gains for republicans at the state level in 2010 – much deeper, broader and sizable than the tea party driven congressional gains. Why? Because overwhelmingly the American people rejected Obama’s political oppertunism and sham call for a new New Deal ala FDR.
In doing so they re-embrached American Capitalism – a decisively different response from FDR in the 30′s. Just as it was in the 70′s.
All we need is to kick out the Pelosi/Obama tools in Washington and put in pro-business Repubs – we can unleash a new era in energy via natural gas and oil and still invest in renewables -and we can offer America companies large and small tax reform to repatriate the big corps while reversing Obama’s debt Deluge via growth.
They said all the same crap in the 80′s Myra – ‘we can’t grow our way out…’ and ‘[insert country] is overtaking us]…. Today it’s ‘inflation is comming just you wait’ and the same middle class ‘ending’ you worry about.
Baloney. I look at our young people today and see no reason why the innovation enjoyed with the twitter Gen is at an end. Take a deep breath Myra – you might just be surprised.
The innovative training programs you desire already exist. There are thousands of community colleges, state universities and other publically financed programs out there for everyone at a very low cost. However, you do have to show up and be prepared to work hard.
You waste time bellyaching for the so called “poor”. You would probably be surprised how much the “poor” in America spend on cigarettes, lottery tickets, alcohol and illegal drugs. The bulk of their problems are self created and can only be solved by them reforming their behavior. Placating them only makes it worse for all.
Next time you hear a supposedly “poor” American complain about the lack of opportunity in this country, you would do them a great service by pointing out the fact that there are billions on this planet that would give anything to trade places with them. Perhaps we should do an exchange program with other countries!
Actually Americans are realizing that the best strategy is mastering a skill. Look at all the competitions on TV, fashion cooking and so forth. Back in the sixties, all such was seen as low rent, now it is seen as a path of success.
For the educated, writing skill is key. In fact, when you get up to the higher levels, that is what gets you into the in crowd. It also is very expensive to teach. I also must note, that middle manage is dead, so just having some ascriptive status will do you no good, you have to have real skills and make real product.
People will demand the tools to meet their needs, and the education establishment will have to meet that need, which means many public school teachers are toast or will be.
Actually, you WILL meet unemployed computer engineers and unemployed medical scientists and unemployed in many other jobs that require a high degree of training and skill. For some time now computer jobs have been moving to India. Teleatlas, one of the two companies worldwide that processes and provides mapping data to produce all those Google maps we enjoy so much was once Geographic Data Services in Lebanon, NH. In the last decade well over half of the jobs that company once provided have moved to India, hundreds of them just two years ago.
It has become common in medical fields & engineering over the last 20 years or so to advertise a job at a salary substantially below what a US worker will accept and then acquire HB1 visas by claiming that there is “nobody in the USA qualified for the job” allowing a company to bring in someone who will work for close to minimum wage.
~ from what I’ve seen throughout the years… Repubs are the biggest problem for employees wages and conditions because THEY promote taking benies AWAY rather than handing them out to workers… More money for the companies VIPs is their mantra !!!
Instead of paying homage to unfair trade agreements (for foreign workers) our companies should have been partnering with the schools to train the generations to come… Only now is some talk going on in that venue… Too little, too late… I would say! This is what comes of having politicians who listen too much to Lobbyists and are much to short sighted on behalf of THEIR nation. . .
Instead of paying homage to unfair Trade agreements that benefitted foreign workers and not our own… the politicians should have been less short-sighted and realized how damaging this would be to their own country and country-men, rather than listening and bowing down to the lobbyists of big business and special interests. . .
Too bad PJMEDIA won’t let us put the blame where the blame belongs; on the politicians in general and on the Trade agreements they have made and on the breaking up of Union workers…. The truth can’t be told here…
I call this meadow muffins and road apples. Half the citizens are taller than the other hall, half are smarter than the other half, half weigh more than the other half. Is it any surprise that half are richer than the other half? Road apples= horse turds, meadow muffins = bull s**t.
The nation faces significant problems, but I am a bit skeptical of the government’s claim that “146.4 million Americans, or 48% of the population, either fall below the poverty line or are in the low-income category.” I will have to do some checking, but I suspect t he way it has defined the categories that result is inescapable. That is, if everyone’s income were doubled overnight, roughly half would, of course, still be in the “bottom half” – yet they might not be poor.