Obama boasts that 3 million jobs have been created since he has been in office. Actually, the work force has shrunk by 4 million people; that is, the total number of jobs in America is 4 million fewer than when Obama took office.
There are officially 12 million “unemployed” workers. This does not include 6 million who have dropped out of the workforce altogether and are no longer counted in these job statistics.
Of the people who have jobs, there are over 6 million who are working below their skill level and/or working part time who want full time jobs.
The unemployment rate hovers around 8%. The underemployment rate is closer to 20%. It hasn’t been this bad since the Great Depression.
The fact is that there is very little Washington can do to change this. Conservatives argue that better tax rates on corporations and the wealthy will stimulate job growth.
Democrats want more stimulus money and things like jobless benefits and a payroll tax cut that put money into people’s hands that they then spend to “stimulate” economic activity.
Truthfully, nobody is going to build a factory in your town unless; well, it’s a nice place to work and live and raise a family.
There is a lot of competition for new factories. Companies send teams of managers out to look at potential sites. They look at the schools, the roads, entertainment, colleges, arts, and public amenities like parks and recreational opportunities.
When it comes to natural beauty no place in the world comes close to America. We have beautiful hills, mountains, lakes, beaches, national parks and fruited plains in abundance.
Every town in every state is within a few hours drive of countless opportunities to get out and experience nature; camping, hiking, biking, fishing, hunting – you name it.
Compare this to China. The government shut down traffic and coal-powered electric power plants in Bejing and its environs for six months before the Olympics to reduce air pollution. As soon as the Olympics were over, the city was once again shrouded in smog so thick that people literally never see the sun except as a hazy globe in the dirty sky. Every major city in China is the same way.
Los Angeles is a paradise by comparison to Chinese cities, and they say that living in LA is like smoking two packs of cigarettes a day since the day you are born. People who live in China are in an environment worse that coal miners, who suffer from black lung disease as an almost given.
Why would any company move their facilities to China? What a gross, disgusting place to live. Pollution of their lakes and rivers and ocean is horrific and out of control. There are no efforts to reduce air pollution.
China builds a new coal-powered electric power plant every week on average, adding more and more soot to an already catastrophic environment. (While the U.S. converts an equal number of coal plants to much cleaner-burning natural gas, to such an extent that our carbon footprint is better than it was in 1994.)
Chinese employees get health benefits just like people in the U.S. What company in their right mind would shoulder of the burden of an entire workforce (and all their dependents) getting lung cancer by the time they are 50?
The biggest problem with convincing companies to move to America, especially to rural locations where land is plentiful and power is cheap, is that people just don’t take care of their communities.
The black side of town is always trashed out. Public schools in small towns are mostly black (white folks send their kids to private schools), and blacks graduate on average with an 8th grade education from those schools.
You won’t ever get a new factory in your small town until black folks clean up their houses and upgrade their education. I know poverty is bad and people get stuck in their circumstances, but how much does it take to clean up your yard and spiffy up the outside of your house with a fresh coat of paint every fifteen years?
Don’t blame Washington for the lack of good jobs until you clean up your own act.
That’s my advice.
