Democratic Response by Senator Jim Webb
Democratic Response by Senator Jim Webb
When one looks at the health of our economy, it’s almost as if we are living in two different countries. Some say that things have never been better. The stock market is at an all-time high, and so are corporate profits. But these benefits are not being fairly shared. When I graduated from college, the average corporate CEO made 20 times what the average worker did; today, it’s nearly 400 times. In other words, it takes the average worker more than a year to make the money that his or her boss makes in one day.
My god, where to start. Ok, why does Webb think it’s the government’s business how much companies are paying their CEOs? One would think that would be the business of the stockholders and the board of directors, that is unless your agenda is trying to equalize outcome instead of equalizing opportunity.
Wages and salaries for our workers are at all-time lows as a percentage of national wealth, even though the productivity of American workers is the highest in the world. Medical costs have skyrocketed. College tuition rates are off the charts. Our manufacturing base is being dismantled and sent overseas. Good American jobs are being sent along with them.
Ok, I just have to ask, who the hell does he consider the “workers” to be? I don’t see how he gets this picture from the data. He is correct, medical costs have skyrocketed, due to government interference in the health care marketplace. He wants to “fix” it with more interference. As to college tuition, people will pay what they will pay. If colleges get too expensive, people will stop going to them and find other means of education. Those “Good American jobs” do not belong to America, or Americans. They belong to the company that wants the work done, and said company needs to be free to hire whomever it chooses.
In short, the middle class of this country, our historic backbone and our best hope for a strong society in the future, is losing its place at the table. Our workers know this, through painful experience. Our white-collar professionals are beginning to understand it, as their jobs start disappearing also. And they expect, rightly, that in this age of globalization, their government has a duty to insist that their concerns be dealt with fairly in the international marketplace.
Yes, some jobs are going overseas, that has been happening for a long time. But look at the picture, we have created a net of 7.2 million jobs. That’s 7.2 million more jobs out there than before. How is that bad? And these aren’t all jobs at Burger King like the democrats would like for you to believe. The job market changes, like it always has. We send less specialized work overseas, and generate more specialized work. These are the good jobs, that it takes intelligence and education to perform, and get the good wages. Yes, we are sending manufacturing and call center and many other low-skill jobs overseas, because it is cheaper to hire people there than it is here, why, well just ask your congressman how the minimum wage affects this. Minimum wage makes it so that companies can’t hire Americans for $3/hour, but they can hire people in Korea, India, China, etc for $.30/day. (I made that up). So where would you hire someone to answer the call center phones? So we outsource these jobs, but we are creating more jobs that require specialized skills and education.