The news is depressing. It is not so much the news that is depressing but the various cable shows and the assorted politicians and pundits who populate these shows, filling the air with platitudes of every shape and variety. As the economy had declined and times have gotten tougher, there is a lot more hemming and hawing among the so-called experts. It appears increasingly, to quote the noted screening writer, William Goldman, that “nobody knows nothing.”
Sure, they get paid for voicing answers, so there will always be answers. The answers may be irrelevant and my not even address the questions, but they are answers nevertheless. Everybody needs a payday. As for the politicians who appear in the news, we would sometimes feel a whole lot better if they would merely admit they really don’t have an answer for all the challenges facing us and they are only doing the best they can. Most of which is out of desperation.
There are general threads the pundits allow. The first is the more intelligent, where people with certain expertise project what actions they would take and what actions they believe should be taken. The second group discusses other people and comments on their actions and whether or not these are positive acts that will rescue the economy. The third group mainly inveighs some jingoistic nonsense along partisan lines and repeats tiresome mantras that are supposed to win points for their party or cause.
Of course there are a number of themes interlaced among these general threads. How is the new President Obama doing? Is the country going Socialist? Is there an end in sight to this Recession? And, of course, the omnipresent chestnut, comparing the travails of Wall Street to Main Street.
In translation, this invites a discussion of whether the increasingly expensive bailouts are worth it and really helping the average American. It is also code for those thieving rogues in the banking and financial industries, versus the poor but honest working Joe and the small business guy in need of a loan to keep his business afloat. Factor in the housing meltdown, the mortgage crisis, and you pretty much have the picture.
There is also the talk about the breathtaking increase of government expenditure and the run up on our national debt. Those in favor see it as a necessary evil and contend that there will be long run benefits. Those opposed see national ruin and gather on Tax Day to make speeches and toss teabags into the river. Of course they wish their fellow Americans will compare this tepid symbolism to the Boston Tea Party that helped kick off the Revolution. Comparing the two is like comparing nose picking to a Menage a’Trois.
But none of this is really the issue here. Simply put, America has stopped making things. Sure we do some manufacturing, but not enough. We let others do it for us, and then we wonder how and why we end up poorer and facing second tier status as a nation. Some of what we still do manage to manufacture is first rate, while other products are sub-par in this competitive environment. Or too expensive, so the products are not cost competitive with the products of other nations.
Largely, compared to how we once were, we do not make much. Instead, we call ourselves a service industry. Or we shuffle papers around in various financial transactions that generate outrageous salaries and llusory profit. Couple the fact that two thirds of this economy is dependent on consumerism. Consumerism brought on by money advanced often through false financial statements, commercial and private. Money that was meted out against overvalued property and goods.
Nevertheless, for the past number of decades we have declared this a viable economy; it is the new America. We have milked every which way possible. We have borrowed money from other countries to fortify our spending. And now we realize we have milked it for as long as we could. As with most occasions, everybody loves the party, but no one likes to pay the tab and the end of the night.
Our economy has become a charade. A game of smoke and mirrors. The overheated real estate market was a charade. An illusion. Common sense should dictate when houses rise in price to where people can no afford them without the assistance of some trick loan, then we are heading for disaster.
But common sense just ain’t so common. In fact, it is often difficult to come by when everyone is busy buying stuff and shuffling papers around. Instead of common sense, we had a… business model. Not just any business model, but the kind that didn’t take into account failure to pay debt as a hurdle that couldn’t be surmounted. Despite Newton’s law that everything that goes up must come down, this business model speculated to the contrary. It was the business model that defied history.
The fact remains, as history has dictated time and again, an economy built on fluff and illusion is doomed to failure. A civilization too self-absorbed to pay attention to its competition will end up in the second tier or even as a civilization in past tense. Instead of a bonafide business model, so many financial people love to model, we had instead a game of musical chairs. When the music stopped, the fun really started. People found themselves without a chair.
We called this debacle an economy for as long as we could. We called it the rule and beauty of the free market. It was never really a free market; it was just a market devoid of regulation. It was a license to steal. As history again dictates, you give people a license to steal and they will take it down with a shovel and a rake.
That is exactly what they did. Of course when things turned sour, as most proponents of the quasi-free market are wont to do they demanded government assistance. Had they been real free marketers they would have acknowledged they screwed it up big time and would have suffered the consequences. They would have gone out of business or struggled to survive. Because in the real free market system you are accountable for your actions. So instead, they have a more socialistic platform where government helps determine the actions of business. It’s Karma, I guess, the Yin and Yang. Some think of it as poetic justice.
So to quote Oliver Hardy of the seminal comedy team, Laurel and Hardy, “what a fine fix you got us in, Stanley.” Indeed. Here we are, out or work, broke, killing time with futile networking or watching pundits on television telling us the things we know or ready. It’s amazing to see what some of the pundits will say with a straight face just so they can pose as experts, collecting a pay check and hate mail while swapping dignity for cash. whether or not they have a clue to what they are talking about. Perhaps as a formula, the average viewer should calculate the more big words the talking heads like to bandy about, the less they know about the subject.
However, there are some salient points that do come up on these news show discussions. It is not all for naught. Fortunately, there are some intelligent souls whose knowledge and insight can supersede the commercial break. And among the talking points most discussed is comparing this economic downturn to the Great Depression. There is a debate about how the Roosevelt Administration took it on and whether the methods were successful or a failure.
There is talk about the Works Progress Administration, better known as the WPA. In short, under the Roosevelt’s New Deal, the WPA with government funding put millions of people to work. Many of our greatest public projects were built through the WPA. The Hoover Dam is but one that comes to mind.
Not everybody was thrilled about the WPA. As with some of Obama’s bankrolling, Roosevelt’s programs looked like an advocate of folly. Some of its detractors labeled it as Socialist. They assigned various acronyms to the initials, including “We Poke Along, We Putter Around,” and my favorite, “Whistle, Piss, and Argue.” But in touch economic times, you have to do something. And Roosevelt did something. He also told his friends, the scions of American Industry, you either kick in your share or I will tax it out of you. Some became more generous in response to that threat.
Today we need a new WPA. We need a program that will meet our times. We need a program that is as sensible as it is proactive. We as a nation have to go back into production. It is not enough to devote funding to rebuilding our infrastructure. We have to develop and produce the new technologies for alternate energy and environmental recovery. We also have to manufacture some of the more basic goods that we can purchase. You know, the essential stuff, like clothing, shoes, and about half the junk we buy from China in its cheap and toxic form.
It is not easy creating a new WPA. Or, rather, it is not easy creating a new WPA that actually creates a meaningful legacy by putting us back on track as an economic power and not a diminished civilization on the slippery slide to second tier status. This does not mean we end globalization but develop the principles in which we have always prided ourselves. That key principle is self reliance.
Yes, it’s a matter of pride. We pride ourselves on self-reliance as individuals and as a nation. At least we did. Now is the time to separate the practical realities from the lip service. To be self-reliant means we do not have to run up a steep debt buying energy from other countries or articles based on planned obsolescence. We can make quality goods that last. As we had learned in years past, quantity does not surpass quality. We buy quantity because we have been trained to shop until we drop. We buy ten cheap articles instead of one good one. Without branding, a label, most people can’t tell the difference between good quality and poor quality. And quite often the label is just another lie.
So what do we do? Well for one thing we take stock of all the factories out there that are lying in ruin. We look at the rest belt and the more blighted areas where workers haven’t had decent jobs since the manufacturing left the country. We form teams that rejuvenate and reinvigorate these old factories. We determine what goods could be manufactured and then we make them. We make them not the old fashioned way but in modern plants with contemporary technology and business acumen. It worked for the steel industry. Why not others?
We combine teams so that they are represented by older workers and executives who are used to economic downturns. The WPA will need the senior employee who has experience coping with disaster. Senior workers bring experience to the projects and not just theory. They can assess what works and what will not, and they may have better management skills in forming the work force.
As the same time you need younger workers who can contribute skills in the newer technologies. Younger people understand the more modern business practices and how to apply them. Merely having an MBA is not enough. We will need well rounded younger people who on the job can develop better interpersonal skills if by no other manner than proximity to the work force. The younger executive’s experience with the newer technologies would coalesce with some of the older and often stronger business practices that can develop industry for the common good.
And what is the common good? Essentially, it is moving America forward by putting millions of people back to work. On one hand it is retraining workers, but on the other it is providing work with which they are at least somewhat familiar. In the common good, these rejuvenated industries are developed as profitable institutions but not with the absolute emphasis on the bottom line. Too much emphasis on the bottom line has proven too often to diminish the quality of the work force and the products they make. Those who invoke only the concept of the bottom line tend to cut corners. They tend to outsource jobs and industries to foreign countries in order to enforce the code of the bottom line. In the end, by enhancing the bottom line for a multi-corporation it has also ruined much of American industry. So make money, but without idol worship of the bottom line.
As for the work force itself, there are enough out of work construction works who would welcome gainful employment by rehabilitating factories and rejuvenating industries. Surely some will be needed to rebuild the national infrastructure but with the construction industry among the hardest hit, there are skilled craftsman in every region of this country who would like nothing more than to put American back on track. Especially when a paycheck is involved.
Workers could be paid a salary, but a significant portion of their incomes should come from profit sharing. Employee co-ops make sense. It is a self-policing system, fortified with the oversight of both private management and Uncle Sam. Simply put, if you don’t produce you don’t make money. If you can manufacture quality goods at competitive price points, then everyone benefits. Some may declare this Socialism, but then some thought of the original WPA as Socialist.
We are not a Socialist society. We prospered as small business owners at first, and then as the nation grew so did its companies. We can base this on the perception it is an amplified form of a smaller business. Additionally, we are a pragmatic nation. We have always prided ourselves in all things practical. We are a nation that likes to do what works. It doesn’t really matter what you call it. If it works, do it. If it doesn’t, then come up with something else. Clearly, it is time to come up with something else.
So how to finance the new WPA. Funding is a mix and match between Uncle Sam and the private investor. Going back to Roosevelt’s threat to his giants of industry, if they don’t contribute he would tax it out of them. The energy companies, Wall Street, they can all pony up. Fund our industries here and not in China, India who wherever else we deem the flavor of the month. If you want national status and tax credits, then fund American industries. If not, then pay more taxes.
As some have said from the time this nation was born, certain freedoms are not rights, they are privileges. We utter this absently and then forget its context. You want to do business here, you contribute to business here. This is not a charitable obligation to pass the time until things rewrite themselves and some can go back to making obscene salaries and profits. It is a time to be accountable. Kick in your share. We are either in this together, or we are not all in this together.
There are many benefits to a working economy that starts from the bottom up. There are benefits to manufacturing in our own back yards. We can develop new technologies that will be needed throughout this century and into the next. We can develop alternate energy sources. We can rebuild the infrastructure to make this all possible.
But we can also make things. We can make things and not just make things up. We can make things and stop pretending this will all go away and the good old days will come roaring back. We can forget the world where we can charge things to our hearts’ content, have boats, trinkets, and fourteen houses. Instead of buying things, we can make things and in doing so we can be assured that most of us can at least make a living.
This is the perfect opportunity for turning our world around. By forming the teams of younger workers who bring their skills to the party and combining them with older workers who use experience and the wherewithal to survive the hard times, we can rehabilitate the rust belt and other regions where abandoned factories and warehouses dot the landscape like so many eyesores. We can provide jobs not only to the educated and the technologically advanced but also to the more fundamental working group who, let’s face it, are hard pressed to learn the skill sets we believe are in their capacity.
We can use this time when people are no longer spending like drunken sailors to reassess our values and to determine what is need and what is excess. We can provide the insight to the underclass and in some cases our middle class that educating their children is far more important than buying a boat or cute little outfits for their pets. We can make the new WPA a meaningful experience and not just another government entitlement project that costs a lot of money and ends up going nowhere. It is time that the stimulus packages not only helped the economy get back on its feet but where it also made money for the taxpayers, the ultimate investors.
Instead of importing so many goods to the point of a substantial annual deficit, we can make our own. Instead of going into debt with China and everyone else to pay for our energy and to pay for our more basic products, we can make our own. We can make stuff and no longer refer to ourselves as a service industry economy. Because as solely a service based economy, we risk reducing ourselves to a subordinate role in the global economy. But couple that with a manufacturing economy, and then we are the reality of the American ethos and not just that of bygone era.
We would be better off for it. Even if our dogs had to wear their own fur coats.
