No News Is Good News

No news is good news. 

Unfortunately, most of the news these days is bad news.

• War
• Terrorism
• Global tensions
• Threats of WMD
• Political dysfunction
• Inflation
• Trade deficit
• Ballooning debt
• Sinking economy
• Global warming
• Social divisions
• Rampant crime
• Chaos at the border
• Pandemic
• Care giver shortage

Only good news is usually technology and acts of compassion, caring, personal sacrifice and sometimes true heroism!  ;-)

(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

No News Is Good News

Budget Cuts Conundrum

So I'm hearing two opposing themes about the proposed federal budget cuts:

1) It's horrible because we are cutting into the bone and this is going to really hurt a lot of important government programs.

2) It's great because we have been spending money that we don't really have, and we need to finally reign it in. 

Let's face it, we'll never get such drastic cuts across the civilian government unless this country goes into severe crisis mode--which never happens until it's too late and something terrible has happened. 

If we even got half the cuts being proposed--which most people don't seem to believe will even happen--that would be significant and painful itself. 

The truth of the matter is that we are facing enormous danger on both the national security and financial fronts!

- Militarily--Russia, China, Iran, North Korea pose huge threats including those involving weapons of mass destruction. 

- Financially--We have a serious national debt to the tune of $20 trillion, an annual trade deficit of half a trillion dollars, and social security and medicare trust funds that are going bankrupt. 

If we let these threats run their course, we will eventually have a crisis that will be truly nationally catastrophic. 

So what's it gonna be--guns or butter--or national bankruptcy. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Budget Cuts Conundrum

Hold On To Your Jobs

These statistics are dismal for manufacturing in the U.S. 

Today, public sector (government) employment is 22.2 million vs. just 12.2 million manufacturing jobs. 

In other words, there are 10 million or 80% more people employed by the government than making things in this country. 

This is the complete opposite from 1979 when government employed 16 million people and manufacturing had 19.6 million workers.

So just 37 years ago, manufacturing employment was 22% more than our public sector employment.

Manufacturing lost 37% of it jobs, while government grew 39%.

It hasn't been since 1989 that there was parity at 18 million between the two sectors. 

Lest you think that the loss in manufacturing jobs is due to automation and technology, the Economic Policy Institute states unequivocally:

"Trade, not productivity, is the culprit."

In the U.S. the annual trade deficit is over half a trillion dollars--we are hemorrhaging and no one has been even trying to stop the bleeding.  

If we send all our manufacturing prowess and capacity abroad eventually we are not only going to lose our capability to make things, our ingenuity to invent things, but our finances to pay for anything. 

Trade is a great thing when it is mutual and equal, not when it is one-sided and damaging to our economy and jobs. 

Bad political decisions mean a poorer future for our economy and our nation. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Hold On To Your Jobs