Blogito, Ergo Sum
by Gregg Calkins
27 November 2010, a Saturday
Bob Herbert warns us:There is no way to bring America’s consumer economy back to robust health if unemployment is chronically high, wages remain stagnant and the jobs that are created are poor ones. Without ordinary Americans spending their earnings from good jobs, any hope of a meaningful, long-term recovery is doomed.
True enough, so that leaves the question: where do "good jobs" come from? Are you, for instance, creating any of them, or must someone else do it?
What is it that the "someone else" has to do in order to create a good job for others?
Isn’t the answer something like they have to be able to provide some good or service which is desired by consumers and which they can produce at a profit by means of hiring others?
Can anyone stay in business hiring an employee who costs his employer more than he brings into his employer’s coffers...and enough more to cover all the costs of overhead including taxes, et al, plus a profit? No.
But the price for which the employer can sell his good or service is set by the marketplace and buyers in the marketplace typically want to buy at the lowest market price, so there’s a limit to how much an employer can pay and still stay in business.
And that limit is determined by the difference between the market price and the "cost of doing business" factor. Taxes and medical costs rank well up there.
Mr Herbert is upset because some people seem to be getting rich during a period when so many others aren’t doing so well, and he sees trouble brewing:
The rich may think that the public won’t ever turn against them. But to hold that belief, you have to ignore the turbulent history of the 1930s.
But here’s one of his complaints:
A stark example of the potential for real conflict is being played out in New York City, where the multibillionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has selected a glittering example of the American aristocracy to be the city’s schools chancellor. Cathleen Black, chairwoman of Hearst Magazines, has a reputation as a crackerjack corporate executive but absolutely no background in education.
Ms. Black travels in the rarefied environs of the very rich. Her own children went to private boarding schools. She owns a penthouse on Park Avenue and a $4 million home in Southampton. She was able to loan a $47,600 Bulgari bracelet to a museum for an exhibit showing off the baubles of the city’s most successful women.
Ms. Black will be peering across an almost unbridgeable gap between her and the largely poor and working-class parents and students she will be expected to serve. Worse, Mr. Bloomberg, heralding Ms. Black as a "superstar manager," has made it clear that because of budget shortfalls she will be focused on managing cutbacks to the school system.
So here we have the billionaire and the millionaire telling the poor and the struggling — the little people — that they will just have to make do with less. You can almost feel the bitterness rising.
So, tell me, would the school system, kids and public be better off if the mayor was not a billionaire and he hired an ordinary poor working teacher to manage the city’s schools chancellor job because the teacher had a background in education?
Wouldn’t a more interesting question be why a wealthy, highly-paid crackerjack business woman even be willing to take such a job? Surely jet-setting on the Riviera has to be more fun? And why knock yourself for people who Herbert says are going to string you up to the lamppost like they did in the 1930s?
As for Bloomberg, is he supposed to balance the school district’s budget out of his own pocket so that the people will pass him by with their nooses?
What’s really needed is for working Americans to form alliances and try, in a spirit of good will, to work out equitable solutions to the myriad problems facing so many ordinary individuals and families. Strong leaders are needed to develop such alliances and fight back against the forces that nearly destroyed the economy and have left working Americans in the lurch.
Unfortunately, the history of unions produced people who did not work in a spirit of good will. And while it might be a nice fairy tale, strong leaders come from among the ranks of those who are already successful as a result of possessing that talent. Ms Black is a crackerjack management executive who could be working at Hearst Corporation if she chose, not struggling with the problems of the city school system, problems which have little to do with knowing anything about education.
Aristocrats were supposed to be anathema to Americans. Now, while much of the rest of the nation is suffering, they are the only ones who can afford to smile.
The history of the 1930s and the lessons of communism and socialism taught us that no problems are ever solved for the people by fomenting class envy, but that’s what Herbert is doing.
Americans rejected (more or less) an aristocracy by birth but not by achievement. Warren Buffett and Bill Gates are very wealthy men who can afford to smile because of their accomplishments. Tearing them down and telling them they shouldn’t dirty their hands in public service is unlikely to do "working Americans" that much good.
Colbert I. King is good for an ironic chuckle as he complains about Obama’s unfair "socialist" label:True, Obama followed Bush with a larger and more job-sustaining stimulus and spending packages of his own. And Obama signed into law a health-reform bill that will dramatically alter health-care financing and extend health insurance to 30 million uninsured Americans. It's amazing, however, how the right-wing collectives fail to apply the socialist label to conservatives Bush and Cheney, the two Republican leaders most responsible for leading the country in the direction of socialism, where Palin said "we are headed."
Of course, Palin et al are wrong on history and substance. Averting the collapse of the financial and auto industries - and the U.S. economy - served the country's best interests. The federal presence in both industries is now being ratcheted down. Bush and Obama were right to act as they did.
It's the singling out and demagoguing of Obama that's wrong and disgusting.
It wasn’t wrong when he was singling out and demagoguing Bush, you understand, but it’s disgusting in the case of Obama. Hold up your hand and give one wave for each time you’ve ever heard Obama and the Democrats blame Bush for everything bad about the country Obama inherited...whoa, it’s getting pretty windy in here.
Obama sat in the Senate during Bush’s last two years, a Senate controlled by Democrats just as the House was under Pelosi, the people who actually write the laws, so since King is endorsing a history lesson here, how did Obama vote on the things Bush did right which he is now continuing?
And did Obama say they were right, at that time, or wrong? Damn if I know, I’m still reeling from the shock of seeing Mr King write that admission so badly, even if he’s forced to do so in order to praise Obama for following Bush’s lead.
Yeah, I know what you are thinking...this means Bush may have been right about Guantanamo, renditions, the technique they liked to call "wire-tapping without a warrant" when he did it, and all sorts of other things I can look forward to Mr King writing about favorably with respect to Bush..