Just some quick thoughts today as the Fed loads up the Rate Cut Roulette chamber and gives it a spin before pointing it at its own head.
Times are tough. They’ve been tough for a lot of Americans for the better part of a year now, but Wall Street hasn’t noticed until the last six weeks or so.
The true measure of the health of the economy is employment, and in the Bush era the job growth in this country has come almost exclusively from low-paying service and retail jobs, along with an expanding health care industry.
And that’s it. Manufacturing jobs are history. Scientific jobs are being run out of town, along with the factories that require innovative engineers and sceintists. Hell, Wall Street’s complaining about us not importing cheaper foreign brains. American scientists and engineers are out there, they just have to take jobs at Starbucks because they have to do something to pay the $200,000 in student loans back while GE is busy muscling Congress for cheaper Asian brains (and they’re taking that experience and heading back to where the science jobs are: Asia.)
McJobs are all we’ve got left.
So, can Starbuck’s baristas, Wally World cashiers and McBurger-Flipping McJobs save our economy?
Starbuck’s is closing stores and its stock has been cut in half since November 06, Wal-Mart’s cutting prices by 30% to try to get people in the door, and McDonald’s sales are the worst they’ve been in five years.
So the one bright spot in the employment picture (and it’s more like a slightly less dark place than the rest) is having serious problems in 2008. Non-exportable service jobs are still being lost…and those are really the only jobs we’ve got left.
The non-Wall Street world has been tightening its belt now for a year. When your neighborhood is full of for sale signs, and food and gas prices are up dramatically from even four or five years ago, and you haven’t gotten a raise in three years, those half-caf talls, Sam’s Choice knickknacks, and lunchtime Quarter Pounders are the first to go.
And while the big financials make news when they lay off 10,000 here or 20,000 there, not so much attention gets paid to McJobs.
And now the McJobs are in McTrouble.
Here’s a sobering thought as we head into the 2008 Presidential election, especially with McCain all but locking up the GOP nomination last night. What DO you do with a bunch of 16-21 year olds who suddenly have serious problems even getting entry level jobs? We’ve dumbed them down. They wouldn’t know Enver Hoxha from Keyser Soze without Google. Hell, they wouldn’t know Patrick Henry from Patrick Ewing.
You think President McCain wouldn’t be above using conscription as a jobs program in a couple of years? You think by 2010 or so, after another 24-30 more months of this (and much worse) people won’t go “Well, he’s right, there really aren’t too many good jobs here…and if that kid’s over in Iraq/Afghanistan/Pakistan/Iran, he’s not HERE trying to take my crappy job for 70% of the pay.”
They’ll applaud the Draft. It’ll be the great savior of America, the Middle East, and the world.
Just a quickie on a Tuesday morning.
