06 May 2016
The Obama Recovery
and Transforming America
President Obama is disappointed that the economic recovery
of the U.S. from the 2007-8 Great Recession is still not sufficiently
appreciated by many in the country (“The
Obama Recovery,” Andrew Ross Sorkin, the NYT Magazine, 5/1/16). However, his prescription for remedying the
slow speed of growth in today’s global economy is a fool’s errand. To attempt a levelling of the playing field
by improving labor conditions and environmental controls abroad, particularly
in the Far East, should not be the mission of the U.S. government—it would be
too interventionist and too costly.
The government is a tool the people can use to incentivize
MNCs to react to overseas competition by investing in the reeducation of
American labor to take advantage of the information revolution that has
transformed U.S. industry. It’s not
simply retraining that is needed, as President Obama acknowledged. It is recognition by capital investors and
labor leaders that the American workforce is grounded on a very advanced and
widespread knowledge base that allows it to rely on other economies to supply
more rudimentary human skills to complete its manufacturing tasks (not to
mention by relying on imported labor to complete many of its service industry
tasks. Understanding of that
transformation of the labor market would diminish the power of Tea Party and
right-wing enthusiasts that dominates the politics of 2016’s Republican Party
nomination primaries in rust-belt states like Indiana.)
America is changing into an information society. The eradication of its vestiges of physical
labor on the factory floor (and in farm lands) will lessen, if not remove, the
leverage on its politics held by those who manipulate blocs of easily-influenced
dependent thinkers. Moreover, as
summarized in the 5/6/16 Washington Post, Americans do not buy as much “stuff”
as they did in the past, reducing the demand for manufacturing output and for the
factory floor jobs that produce it.
Public policy should focus on broadening autonomous thinking among
Americans in order to maintain the country’s world leadership.
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