How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds (Counterpunch) by Paul Craig Roberts Page B
Authors: Paul Craig Roberts
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Americans would save more of their incomes, they would not spend so much on imports, and the $726 billion trade gap would close.
This analysis is nonsensical on its face. Offshore outsourcing has turned U.S. production into imports. Americans are now dependent on offshore production for their clothes, manufactured goods, and advanced technology products. There are simply no longer domestic producers of many of the products on which Americans depend.
Moreover, many Americans are struggling to make ends meet, having lost their jobs to offshore outsourcing. They are living on credit cards and struggling to make minimum payments. Median household real incomes are falling as higher paid jobs are outsourced while Americans are relegated to lower-paying jobs in domestic services.
They haven’t a dollar to save. As Charles McMillion points out, the February 28, 2006, report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis shows that all GDP growth in the fourth quarter of 2005 was due to the accumulation of unsold inventory and that consumers continued to outspend their incomes.
Matthew Spiegleman, a Conference Board economist, claims that manufacturing jobs are only slightly higher paid than domestic service jobs. He reaches this conclusion by comparing only hourly pay and by leaving out the longer manufacturing work week and the associated benefits, such as health care and pensions.
(4) Policy reports from think tanks reflect what the donors want to hear. Truth can be “negative” and taken as a reflection on the favored administration in power. Consider, for example, the conservative, Bruce Bartlett, who was recently fired by the National Center for Policy Analysis for writing a truthful book about George W. Bush’s economic policies. Donors to NCPA saw Bartlett’s truthful book as an attack on George Bush, their hero, and withheld $165,000 in donations. There were not enough Bartlett supporters to step in and fill the gap, so he was fired in order to save donations.
When I held the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, I saw internal memos describing the grants CSIS could receive from the George H.W. Bush administration in exchange for removing me from the Simon chair.
In America “truth” has long been for sale. We see it in expert witness testimony, in the corrupt reports from forensic labs that send innocent people to prison, and even in policy disputes among scientists themselves. In scholarship, ideas that are too challenging to prevailing opinion have a rough row to hoe and often cannot get a hearing.
The few reporters and columnists who are brave or naive enough to speak out are constrained by editors who are constrained by owners and advertisers.
All of these reasons and others make truth a scarce commodity. Censorship exists everywhere and is especially heavy in the U.S. mainstream media.
March 3, 2006
Chapter 17: The Science & Technology Jobs Shortage Myth
I n June, 2007, a revealing marketing video from the law firm Cohen & Grigsby appeared on the Internet. The video demonstrated the law firm’s techniques for getting around U.S. law governing work visas in order to enable corporate clients to replace their American employees with foreigners who work for less. The law firm’s marketing manager, Lawrence Lebowitz, is upfront with interested clients: “our goal is clearly not to find a qualified and interested U.S. worker.”
If an American somehow survives the weeding out process, “have the manager of that specific position step in and go through the whole process to find a legal basis to disqualify them for this position—in most cases there doesn’t seem to be a problem.”
No problem for the employer he means, only for the expensively educated American university graduate who is displaced by a foreigner imported on a work visa justified by a nonexistent shortage of trained and qualified Americans.
University of California computer science
This analysis is nonsensical on its face. Offshore outsourcing has turned U.S. production into imports. Americans are now dependent on offshore production for their clothes, manufactured goods, and advanced technology products. There are simply no longer domestic producers of many of the products on which Americans depend.
Moreover, many Americans are struggling to make ends meet, having lost their jobs to offshore outsourcing. They are living on credit cards and struggling to make minimum payments. Median household real incomes are falling as higher paid jobs are outsourced while Americans are relegated to lower-paying jobs in domestic services.
They haven’t a dollar to save. As Charles McMillion points out, the February 28, 2006, report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis shows that all GDP growth in the fourth quarter of 2005 was due to the accumulation of unsold inventory and that consumers continued to outspend their incomes.
Matthew Spiegleman, a Conference Board economist, claims that manufacturing jobs are only slightly higher paid than domestic service jobs. He reaches this conclusion by comparing only hourly pay and by leaving out the longer manufacturing work week and the associated benefits, such as health care and pensions.
(4) Policy reports from think tanks reflect what the donors want to hear. Truth can be “negative” and taken as a reflection on the favored administration in power. Consider, for example, the conservative, Bruce Bartlett, who was recently fired by the National Center for Policy Analysis for writing a truthful book about George W. Bush’s economic policies. Donors to NCPA saw Bartlett’s truthful book as an attack on George Bush, their hero, and withheld $165,000 in donations. There were not enough Bartlett supporters to step in and fill the gap, so he was fired in order to save donations.
When I held the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, I saw internal memos describing the grants CSIS could receive from the George H.W. Bush administration in exchange for removing me from the Simon chair.
In America “truth” has long been for sale. We see it in expert witness testimony, in the corrupt reports from forensic labs that send innocent people to prison, and even in policy disputes among scientists themselves. In scholarship, ideas that are too challenging to prevailing opinion have a rough row to hoe and often cannot get a hearing.
The few reporters and columnists who are brave or naive enough to speak out are constrained by editors who are constrained by owners and advertisers.
All of these reasons and others make truth a scarce commodity. Censorship exists everywhere and is especially heavy in the U.S. mainstream media.
March 3, 2006
Chapter 17: The Science & Technology Jobs Shortage Myth
I n June, 2007, a revealing marketing video from the law firm Cohen & Grigsby appeared on the Internet. The video demonstrated the law firm’s techniques for getting around U.S. law governing work visas in order to enable corporate clients to replace their American employees with foreigners who work for less. The law firm’s marketing manager, Lawrence Lebowitz, is upfront with interested clients: “our goal is clearly not to find a qualified and interested U.S. worker.”
If an American somehow survives the weeding out process, “have the manager of that specific position step in and go through the whole process to find a legal basis to disqualify them for this position—in most cases there doesn’t seem to be a problem.”
No problem for the employer he means, only for the expensively educated American university graduate who is displaced by a foreigner imported on a work visa justified by a nonexistent shortage of trained and qualified Americans.
University of California computer science
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