[Vision2020] You're Doing One Heckufa Job on the Economy, Bushie!

[nickgier at adelphia.net]

Hi Jeff,

I held off recording my commentary hoping that I would hear from you, so thank you for your response.  

I was fully prepared to be corrected and defer to your greater knowledge in these areas, but frankly I was very disappointed. I've read a lot of Republican responses to the facts that I present, and your defense (or deviation from the foci of my piece) was not any more convincing.

First, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U. S. Census do not tell stories.  They gather raw facts, not anecdotes.  Of course raw facts have to be interpreted, but you've not responded to my reading of the statistics, except entry level salaries for the college educated.

I know all about how supply and demand affect salaries.  Just talk to any Ph. D. in humanities and the social sciences on the UI or WSU campuses, where their hard earned doctoral degrees gets them half the pay of computer science profs. For me a Ph.D. is a Ph. D., and don't tell them that they should have studied computer science, because that was not their passion.  Universities need teachers in all fields and those in areas with no market value should not be penalized because of it.

I'm having lots of difficulty understanding your analysis of job opportunities for college grads. At the end of your analysis, I'm not sure if you are talking about college grads at all, because you have them competing with illegal immigrants!
Furthermore, aren't all college grads highly skilled, or easily trained by those companies that now prefer HumS&S grads for business positions? Finally, has the mix of skill, demand, and types of jobs changed so much under Bush that that after a rise in college grad salaries over 30 years, it now drops in five short years, 7.5 percent for men and 3.5 percent for women? Are there really that fewer jobs in engineering, computer science, and accounting?  Bill Gates is begging students to major in computer science so that he can give them a high paying job. 

Even if you can convince me that Bush was not repsonsible for this drop in wages, you would still have to agree with me that this is a poor economy for beginning workers.

You say that "stock ownership has never, in history, been more diversified 
and held more widely," but why is it that in 2003 the average 401K had a measly $64,600 in it?  And can you tell me how many poor people actually own stock, the same people that just barely pay their rent or their medical bills? 

Yes, I plead guilty to being a thief and fellow exploiter, because I am very privileged.  I knew that even as a poor assistant professor, who was given a 9 month waiver on the balance of a prenatal care bill for my pregnant wife, while at the same reading that poor Idahoans went without such care because they had to pay up front.  

Yes, I have a defined benefit pension plan with COLAS; and yes, I have mutual funds in a family trust; and yes, those funds are probably invested in cigarettes, booze, weapons, and many other evil things; and yes, I feel guilty that these benefits are not as widely shared as they are in most European countries.

And yes I will use these statistics to argue for the importance of unions, which during the 1950s and 1960s made sure that median income doubled.  The beginning of end of the U. S. labor movement began with Reagan firing the air controllers and giving the high sign to employers, so that they started hiring replacement workers and they no longer needed to bargain in good faith with their employees.  It is no coincidence that the decline in median income began right at the time.  

Workers of America unite! You have everything to lose, including your children's and grandchildren's economic future.

Thanks for the dialogue.

Nick
 
P. S. Thanks for the recommendation to read the Wall Street Journal, but I'm already more than booked up reading the Manchester Guardian and The New York Times. I read also read some of the best economists in The New Republic and The NY Review of Books.  Paul Krugmann and Robert Reich are my favorites.