As Paul Krugman reports in the September 21 issue of the New York Times, Mitt Romney seems to have a very different interpretation of who “hard-working Americans” are from most other economic observers.  Krugman argues that Romney and many other Republicans cannot count those people who work with their hands and who sweat through a day as “hard-working Americans.”  Instead he sees the hard-workers almost exclusively as those who are so-called job-creators, or those who start and own small businesses.  Does that mean that if an individual creates an auto repair shop that the only hard-working American in the enterprise is the man or woman who started the shop?  What about those who are under the racks and doing the hard work of fixing the breaks or repairing the transmission?  Apparently they don’t count.  As Krugman says:

For the fact is that the modern Republican Party just doesn’t have much respect for people who work for other people, no matter how faithfully and well they do their jobs. All the party’s affection is reserved for “job creators,” a k a employers and investors. Leading figures in the party find it hard even to pretend to have any regard for ordinary working families — who, it goes without saying, make up the vast majority of Americans.

It’s important to point out that, according to the Small Business Administration, any business that employs 500 workers or less qualifies as a small business.  Such a small business may just be large enough for Romney’s Bain Capital to take a small interest in it.  What most of us consider to be small businesses afd what Krugman’s colleague Thomas Friedman calls micro-businesses; those with 10 or less employees.  So even if we take Romney’s narrow view of who is a hard-working American, these entrepreneurs of small businesses may have corporations with up to 500 workers.

Krugman further reports that Romney’s colleague Eric Cantor, the Republican House majority leader, reinforced his idea by saying:

Consider the Twitter message sent out by Eric Cantor, the Republican House majority leader, on Labor Day — a holiday that specifically celebrates America’s workers. Here’s what it said, in its entirety: “Today, we celebrate those who have taken a risk, worked hard, built a business and earned their own success.” Yes, on a day set aside to honor workers, all Mr. Cantor could bring himself to do was praise their bosses.

Romney’s ideas are often misguided, and what’s worse, he frequently does not understand them.  Chalk it up as just one more reason why he simply does not have the skill to be president of the United States, much less CEO of a real company that makes something.

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Who’s violating fair labor standards in your neighborhood? And which companies in your area are outsourcing jobs? You can find out at Job Tracker, an online database maintained by Working America.

Reporting violators of fair labor standards is a new addition to Job Tracker. Working America has just added 40,000 new records from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour inspections database. The new records track corporate violators of the Fair Labor Standards Act [FLSA], which governs minimum wage, overtime pay and child-labor laws.  Job Tracker enables you to see companies by zip code, with the number of violations, the number of children employed illegally, back wages paid, fines assessed and information about companies considered repeat or willful violators.

The new records build on Job Tracker’s first-of-its kind consolidation of data about mass layoffs and anticipated plant closings, OSHA violations, labor law violations, and listings of companies that have sent jobs overseas.  Job Tracker is a joint project of Working America and the AFL-CIO and contains data on over 400,000 companies. Working America, a fast-growing organization for working people in the U.S., has 3 million members.

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Robert Reich has been a contrarian about most of the Obama economic policies, but that does not necessarily make him a negative person.  In fact he is as jocular as a short skinny man can be, focusing his biting wit first on himself; then on others. He deserves a lot of slack when he critiques policies because at heart he is an optimist and when there are reasons to cheer, he’ll be among the first.

How can you tell when someone is a “doomsayer” or someone with a clear vision in contrast to conventional wisdom?

When it comes to advocating trickle-down economics, he’ll say that a Democrat who advocates it is someone who is most likely abandoning the traditional constituents of the party.  This means that Democrats are walking away from almost everyone except the very wealthy and the extreme social conservatives.  This is not your father’s Democrat; certainly not your grandfather’s, which included embracing FDR’s New Deal.

Recently, the Obama administration has been justifiably touting some positive economic numbers.  Corporate profits are up; the stock-market has soared since the Obama inauguration, companies such as General Motors that were bailed out are now profiting and repaying their loans from the government with interest.

And now we hear what we have long awaited, unemployment is down and jobsare up.  In his March 4 post, Reich says:

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports 192,000 new jobs in February (220,000 new jobs in the private sector and a drop in government employment), and a drop in the overall unemployment rate from 9 to 8.9 percent.

But to get to the most important trend you have to dig under the job numbers and look at what kind of new jobs are being created. That’s where the big problem lies.

The National Employment Law Project did just that. Its new data brief shows that most of the new job

 

s created since February 2010 (about 1.26 million) pay significantly lower wages than the jobs lost (8.4 million) between January 2008 and February 2010.

He illustrates this with these chilling statistics:

While the biggest losses were higher-wage jobs paying an average of $19.05 to $31.40 an hour, the biggest gains have been lower-wage jobs paying an average of $9.03 to $12.91 an hour.

In other words, the big news is not jobs as some would want us to believe. It’s wages.  We work for basically two reasons: (a) a way of gaining personal fulfillment, and (b) accruing income that allows us to purchase necessities, and if possible, some discretionary items.  Whether an individual makes the federal minimum wage of $7.25 / hour or $5,000 / hour as some hedge fund managers do, he or she is still counted as employed.

The Economic Policy Institute maintains a dynamic web site on “The State of Working America” with hundreds of graphs and charts.  The graph below illustrates how since 1973 wages for the wealthy have grown rapidly while those of the poor have declined.  This is not news to anyone, but it is a fact that is rarely pointed out when monthly employment figures are released

Structural changes make the situation worse.  Reich points out, “Millions of private-sector workers have been fired and then re-hired as contract workers to do almost exactly what they were doing before, but without any benefits or job security.”  When combined with the outsourcing that has taken place since 1973, it’s no small wonder that the American worker’s worries do not end with whether or not they are employed, but at what wage.

Current American capitalism means that we have high unemployment with low wages which forces more and more consumers to shop at the likes of the Dollar Store.  If we had lower unemployment with high wages, consumers could more readily afford Target, Macy’s, or even more expensive stores such as Needless Mark-up (or something like that).

In his blog, Reich repeatedly points out that the most secure jobs are those in the public sector.  They cannot be outsourced and wages at least keep up with inflation.  At least that’s the way it was before Scott Walker’s Wisconsin and the vision that he any most Republicans have of the American economy.

As we give kudos to the Obama administration for beginning to reverse declining employment trends, we need to keep the pressure on to ensure that the jobs that are created are ones that pay decent wages.  As is so often the case, when this administration gets to an intersection, it tends to look right before crossing.  We need to do more to ensure that it looks both ways.

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