I saw an interview with one of the oil workers in the Gulf. He was upset that there was a moratorium on drilling offshore. He saw his lively hood going down the drain. It is sad to think that the company town or region is back; where one industry has most of the jobs and if that industry chooses to leave or doesn't thrive, thousands of people are jobless.
Over the pass two years many have loss their jobs and there is this clamor to do something to create jobs. My question, where are those jobs going to come from? Can thousands of fast food, telemarketing, home health aides and retail sales jobs feed all these people and stimulate the economy? During the financial crisis, the financial sector and banks shrunk in size, although they became huge in the percentage of the market share. With technology, they don't need the same number of people to run those businesses. It is not that man is being taken over by machines, it is that in the US, hardly any thing is manufactured anymore.
I have always wondered just how many vending push carts would actually make money. Entrepreneurship is fine, but there have to be major businesses that employ a huge amount of people, in a population this size. Some politicians talk of how small businesses would solve the unemployment problem, as if this is 14th century Bruges. Quite often when an idea is developed, it is implemented overseas. The free trade treaties have not produced a balance of trade nor had it produced enough jobs for all parties. The economic world now is running on theories and ideology, not pragmatism. Some think that capitalism in its essential laissez-faire form is necessary to a democracy; as if this system was running like a machine, no human involvement what so ever.
In this new order there can be no restrictions to keep jobs in this country. However, one way survival may be possible, would be to finds ways to create small self sufficient communities. People within these communities would grow food and produce dairy locally and perhaps barter for local services such as plumbing, carpentry, electrical, landscaping and painting. It would also include reducing dependence upon technology. Thus, creating a community with a reduced cost of living, so that the few jobs they have or the hit many will take in their salaries, can allow for that American dream.
