America's unemployed
iht.com
Friday, September 5, 2003
Considering that more than 80,000 jobs have
been shed for each month of his presidency,
George W. Bush's announcement that he is
creating a new undersecretary of commerce post
devoted to job creation is notable for its
feebleness. The only detail yet clear is that the
post is to be devoted to the "needs of
manufacturers." That is hardly a confidence
builder for the 9 million trying to find work plus
the millions more who have given up.
The 2.7 million jobs lost in the private sector in
less than three years is one of the worst slides in
decades. "There are better days ahead," Bush told
union workers on Labor Day, in a choice of
language that eerily echoes Herbert Hoover. The
United States should not forget the president's
earlier insistent prescription: in selling his tax
cuts in the Republican Congress, Bush
proclaimed them as just the economic "jobs and
growth" package workers needed. But the
unemployment problem remains rock-hard in
resisting the administration's trickle-down fantasy
that cuts for the affluent will generate new jobs for
the working class.
The tax cuts have failed to do the trick, and the
recovery has so far not been of a size sufficient to
create jobs. Ominously, a new study by the
Federal Reserve Bank of New York says this
recession's job losses have been far more
structural and permanent than in the past. Now, a
new job czar has emerged like the Wizard of Oz to
signal that the presidential election cycle is upon
us. The agony of the jobless deserves the fullest
attention of the president and his eager rivals, and
action more ambitious than the addition of
employment for one happy undersecretary in the
Commerce Department. |
