Notes for Obama and the Economy September 6, 2010
Posted by gulfshorewriter in Business, Economy.trackback
President Obama is making the news today telling everyone that he’s turning his attention to the economy. Well, it’s about time. It’s in shambles, Mr. President and the overall gross numbers may not indicate all the disastrous micro-trends or the one-off and two-off effects.
Please note that we do not need to only make the unemployment numbers better or the number of jobs available to go up but we need to make some allowances and open some discussions on the changes that have happened to the very model of our economy. A few come to mind.
If you have been laid off in your 50s or 60s recently, you had better think about starting your own business or working for Wal-Mart if they’ll hire you. The chances are good that no one is going to hire you because everyone that’s getting hired now, with a few exceptions, are young, work cheap and have a year to five of experience.
The very young, those just out of school are also having a hard time. No one wants to train any more. No one seems to want to hire anyone with more experience than they have. They don’t want to pay high salaries but they are also using that as an excuse they can use when someone cries age discrimination. If the higher paid, older guys are willing to work for less, they still are not being hired. The thinking is that they’re just there long enough to find a higher paying job. Think again.
No one is hiring them at any rate of pay right now and probably for the foreseeable future. You think that taking care of older people was going to be a huge problem before? Wait until none of them are working any more, and not by their choice, and you younger guys start paying their way to live day-to-day and their medical. If I were you, I’d start finding something for the 60 and over crowd to do that is productive and allows them to pay their own way. That’s what they want and ultimately you’ll want that as well when you start paying their bills and don’t think you won’t.
The economy and businesses in the U.S. have for a long time now been extremely short-sighted. Make the quarter. Make the fiscal year. It’s close to time for that to bite us all in the butt. Who cares about training new talent or finding some experience or developing it when we might miss our numbers for the quarter?
A lot of the changes in the financial markets now are likely good ones but the crucial one may ultimately be to get everyone’s mindset off the short-term and on to long-term growth, stability and jobs. Right now, I’d love to see a big company with flat earnings if they are making a contribution and keeping their employees on the payroll. I don’t want to have to feed their kids. I’m afraid mine may be having to feed me at this rate.
So, President Obama, let’s think this one through a bit before simply throwing money at infrastructure and watching the numbers for the next quarter. Yes, I know, elections are coming. Do something that’s right and not just for reelections.
I agree wholeheartedly, Mike, but don’t believe anyone, Obama included, has the strength or wherewithall to tackle what needs to be done: remove the tax breaks for companies that offshore, provide tax credits to companies that hire/rehire laid off employees — with perhaps a little ‘extra credit’ to hire over 50′s. It doesn’t take a degree in rocket science to see that putting the breaks on unemployment benefits will only increase the numbers on welfare and a generation that has contributed more than any other to the wellbeing of society, socially, economically and technologically is being hung out to dry at a time in their lives when they should be reaping the benefits of a lifetime of hard work.
Thanks for the comment. It’s not going to be easy to make even a dent in it but I do think that it’s where the major governmental and business focus has to be, especially if the politicians want to be reelected. The worse failure is doing nothing to fix what has had so much done to break it.