Jobs and Housing
Today’s papers carried depressing stories about the fall off in home sales and the gross absence of jobs, especially in the inner city Camden, NJ area. With respect to home sales, while depressing, this should not be a real surprise with the weak economy outlook and ruins of the housing bubble all around. With respect to jobs, this should be a wake up call for Federal, State, and local officials.
More jobs, of course, could boost home sales just by itself. But it isn’t that easy to say, well let’s just have more jobs. Jobs require a lot of other factors in order to materialize.
For example, jobs flow to people who are qualified and show up for work. High school drop outs have a much more difficult time finding employment and are almost excluded from consideration of “good” jobs. Jobs also flow to places where the labor environment is constructive and works easily with management. And, jobs flow to places where State and local officials create incentives and positive working relationships with job creators (companies).
Think about the past 30 years. Unions have reenforced win-lose relationships in both the private and public sectors. Companies have sold their souls to Wall Street in order to reward senior executives disregarding the future investments necessary to meet global competition. States have systematically avoided hard decisions versus the productive, if not the utility, of many State funded agencies and allowed these budgets to grow to proportions that can no longer be sustained. Worst of all, along the way, many of these States have bitten the “jobs hand” that had fed it. Both States and local authorities have turned their backs on the underlying causes of the education system’s failures. The Federal Government has done its share too. The nation’s infrastructure is crumbling. The feds have at times turned their back on science, and have not emphasized math, science, and engineering. Sensible regulation has been non-existent.
Politically it is still too easy to blame the other party. It is still too easy to blame those unemployed. It is still too easy to simply say it is not my problem.
There is no silver bullet or magic wand treatment that can make things different. As all too frequent, sustained improvement in home sales (read the economy) and jobs (read the engine of the economy) rests upon a skilled and talented work force. There needs to be intelligent and cooperative efforts from Federal, State, and local agencies, all working together and not separately. Profits must be fair and investments in the future must be adequate and well managed.
None of this is natural or should be expected to just happen. But anyone at the Federal, State, or local level can start.
The New Year is a time of renewed hope. We can hope but as a little incentive, think about how things are today and imagine the current state is the best we may ever see.
This entry was posted on December 29, 2010 at 12:06 pm and is filed under Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Politics, Republican Party. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.
Tags: economy, education, jobs, states, unions
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