Robert Reich: Manufacturing Illusions

[kpete]

Manufacturing Illusions
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2012

Suddenly, manufacturing is back – at least on the election trail. But don’t be fooled. The real issue isn’t how to get manufacturing back. It’s how to get good jobs and good wages back. They aren’t at all the same thing.

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The fact is, American corporations – both manufacturing and services – are doing wonderfully well. Their third quarter profits (the latest data available) totaled $2 trillion. That’s 19 percent higher than the pre-recession peak five years ago.

But American workers aren’t sharing in this bounty. Although jobs are slowly returning, wages continue to drop, adjusted for inflation. Of every dollar of income earned in the United States in the third quarter, just 44 cents went to workers’ wages and salaries — the smallest share since the government began keeping track in 1947.

The fundamental problem isn’t the decline of American manufacturing, and reviving manufacturing won’t solve it. The problem is the declining power of American workers to share in the gains of the American economy.

http://robertreich.org/post/17775746428

[TheMastersNemesis]

1. The Education Myth

The education meme is largely a myth in today's environment. We have large numbers of college educated Americans who are working for "dirt wages". Reich is right the issue is livable wages for Americans of ALL levels of education. If capitalism cannot provide a decent living for workers of all levels of skill, it is a failure.

The dirty little secret is that business does not want to provide living wages and it says it cannot provide them. While business gives all the money to CEO's and starves workers it does not get criticized for its behavior. Business gets a pass no matter how exploitive it becomes.

[geckosfeet]

2. They want cheaper and cheaper labor as "executive" pay increases.

The meme goes on to extol the "executives" as the job providers. In reality they are the robber barons, keeping the serfs in poverty as their opulence swells.