Notes on Robert Reich

[Moses]

by Billee Bussard

Last night I heard Robert Reich speak at the University of North Florida, his talk billed as "Our Future: Education Policy as Economic Development." I came home VERY depressed.

Here is one of the leading Democrats spouting the same rhetoric as Republicans and Business Roundtable types about education being the critical component if our nation is to be competitive in the global marketplace.

His message essentially was that we'd better get used to the fact that declining wages (even for high skill workers) and shrinking benefits are inevitable. So if you want to survive in the global economy, you and your children have to have multiple talents and skills to provide "added value" and to make you a more productive worker. Those who can offer "added value" will have a higher standard of living, although, face it, not as high a standard of living as our parents had.

Those who aren't well educated will just subsist. He even suggested that Milton Friedman may have the solution to sustain such people when he suggested we give those willing to work at low-wage jobs an "earned income tax credit." In other words, throw a bone to the slave-wage class.

I was so disgusted, I sat in my seat while others stood to give him a standing ovation at the end of the talk. Do these people not have ears? Why are they accepting this rhetoric?

Reich says the only way Americans can get out of the huge deficits Bush has created is to be more productive. "We must become more productive so we can afford more..." everything from infrastructure improvements to deficit reduction and education. "The more educated our workforce, the more likely world capital will want to come to the United States to do business because our workers will be more productive."

Oh, and he said pre-school programs are key to preparing the highly educated workforce of the future. I wanted to get up and scream, "but what about Finland, where the kids don't start school until they are 6 or 7 years old?"

So it is all about higher skills and lower wages--and both Democrats and Republicans are spreading the message that Americans better get used to it.

After the talk, I went up to Reich and asked why all these school reform reports have failed to note American parents already put in the longest work week of the industrialized competitors and that you can make a correlation between student test scores and the hours parents work? He seemed surprised that I knew to ask that question but quickly said that information IS provided by the OECD. If that is true, I haven't seen it.

When someone asked him about the illegal workers in the U.S., all he could say was we might as well face it that there are many jobs Americans just don't want to do and these people serve a purpose. Then, sounding like George Bush, he suggested that some kind of "guest worker" program may be inevitable.

No talk of requiring a "level playing field" in the global marketplace, where every worker has health benefits and a minimum living wage. It's a race to the bottom. It's all about making more money for the power elite with more productive, highly educated workers who are willing to work for less than their parents made who had much less education.

If this is truly a reflection of the thinking of Democratic Party leadership, then this nation is in big trouble.




— Billee Bussard
Robert Reich Speech
2005-11-17

[RPankn]

Just how many jobs would Reich like us to hold? Two, three, more? What about everyone else in the family? And just how old would children have to be before it's ok for them to start working in Reich's opinion? Maybe that explains why Hellary and the rest of the DLC contingent are on morality patrol: they know parents will be too busy working two, three, four, or six jobs to monitor what their children see, hear and read, so the state will do it for them. Wait, that doesn't make sense either because it seems Reich would have children working too. Why hasn't anyone remarked about how totalitarian it all sounds?

And what a conflicting message to send. Under the tenets of American "capitalism," part of being successful is being your own man, or woman, and moving out from the family home to make your own way in the world, potentially starting your own family. Yet Reich is moving us all right back there, living in some sort of cheap labor collective, and taking whatever jobs are available to help the family survive. The only time I have heard thinking like this is when talking to recent immigrants who moved here from the so-called "Third World," and in texts from Europe during Medieval times and the Dark Ages. That in itself is commentary enough and explains where people like Reich wish to take this country. And it should be enough for us all to loudly say, "hell no; take your "inevitable globalization" and shove it, Mr. Reich."

Further, for all the talk of needing education and "retraining," which we apparently need to do everytime a new multinational trade deal is announced, no one addresses who's going to pay for all this education, or exactly how many degrees they would like us to hold. I have two degrees so far, Mr. Reich, and neither one is doing me any good beyond serving as wall art and conversation pieces. You see, the metropolitain area I live in depends heavily on tourism and allied services, and thus demands unskilled labor to work at minimum wage and tip-wage rates.

So where does that leave someone like me, Mr. Reich? I worked those kind of jobs to put myself though college and grad school; I got my education, like you suggested. But the reason I pursued my degrees was not only to improve myself, but becuase they were supposed to be my insurance policy against having to work in unskilled positions for minimum wage ever again. Yet that's all I find myself surrounded with.

I recall during the 90s types like you were telling us that globalization and "free trade" were good, because the low-paying, unskilled jobs we didn't want would be outsourced to countries that had workers who wanted them. And you promised here at home we'd be left with more than enough high-paying jobs that required skilled and professional labor, at which I could put my education and degrees to use. So where are those jobs, Mr. Reich? I certainly don't see them. It seems that I, and many others like me, have held up our end of the bargain, but you haven't.

[Moses]

The American Public seems to find totalitarianism wielded throught the public school system as acceptable social engineering. And I guess you are free(er) if you have no children in the public schools. But if you do, you might as well live in a totalitarian state.

[Moses]

Reich is pretty much saying that there won't be any jobs in the US. This doesn't seem to bother Reich and his ilk.