From the solutions he offers to the labor challenges facing
the U.S. economy in his article titled “Where Have All the Workers Give,” Glenn
Hubbard must think that the problem is a lack of workers, not a lack of jobs.
Hubbard, dean of Columbia Business School, economic advisor
to Mitt Romney and former chair of the Council of Economic Advisors under Bush
II, is merely expressing the deepest fears of the business establishment: that
when the Baby Boom generation retires, a shortage of labor will drive up wages
as fewer people compete for a similar number of jobs.
Now to most people, the problem with the economy is that it
is not producing enough jobs. The unemployment rate is still 6.7% and even
Hubbard admits that large numbers of the long-termed unemployed have stopped
looking for jobs. Plus there are all those underemployed, the hordes of
twenty-something baristas and call center operators with college diplomas. Now common sense would suggest that we need
more jobs, but Hubbard believes the real challenges is to get those long term
unemployed back looking for jobs—and driving down wages even more than the nose
dive in buying power that most people’s compensation took over the past 30
years.
The article, which leads the Wall Street Journal’s Saturday “Review” section, bemoans all
government efforts to stimulate the creation of more jobs except one: lowering
corporate taxes. Studies have of course
long ago disproven the idea that lowering taxes gives job creators the funds to
create more jobs, and that in fact raising taxes creates more jobs. But Hubbard
prefers to live in a world of false notions passing as ideas, not one of facts.
Or maybe the world of sound bites he mouths on his Fox News TV appearances.
While ignoring job creation, the good professor describes a
complete program for creating more job-seekers:
·
Remove the so-called disincentives to work
created by the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act.
·
Make it harder to qualify for Social Security
disability benefits, since without benefits, the disabled will have more
incentive to seek employment.
·
Turn much of unemployment insurance into job
training—in other words, take the money that those on unemployment insurance
were going to use on food and rent and give it to community colleges and
for-profit vocational schools for tuition. Keep in mind that a relatively small
percent of employers are having trouble finding people with the skills their
businesses need—maybe 15-20% of all unfilled jobs.
·
Eliminate taxes on those receiving Social
Security and still working, so that seniors who rejoin the work force will be
able to keep more of what they make, supposedly an incentive for the old
warriors to strap on their gear again and earn a paycheck.
Of course, those seniors won’t be making that much, and
certainly much less than now if Hubbard’s proposals became law. Hubbard wants to force feed more workers onto
the job market, but he proposes nothing to create more jobs.
Like most mainstream Republicans, Hubbard’s underlying interest
in advocating these positions is to suppress the cost of wages, which in effect
takes money from the poor and middle class and gives it to the owners and
operators of businesses AKA the wealthy.
He is trying to undermine the first decent break that Generation X and
the Millennials are getting from the 21st century economy—a shrinking work
force.
Hubbard’s essay boils down to a declaration of class
warfare—or should I say, to a strategic plan for the next phase in the 30+-year
war of the wealthy on everyone else in the United States.
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