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Fraggin'

By Bill Shunas

Good jobs are getting hard to find. They're more likely to be disappearing than developing. Health care for many has been and keeps disappearing. Jobs - not only the good ones - are disappearing during this recession. Homes are being lost. The war in Iraq seems endless. Most Americans would probably agree that the future doesn't look good at this point. What folks want are for things to be different. They want things to change.

So guess what. It's an election year. The theme for this year's presidential election is - change. Change all the things mentioned in the preceding paragraph. Barack wants change. Hillary wants it. McCain wants it. The people need change. So, vote for me. I'll set you free. If the past is any indication only a few will be set free.

The question becomes, will the new president change a lot of things or maybe just a little. Most likely he or she (as I write this Hillary is still an active candidate) will shoot for small changes while trying to create a feel-good atmosphere modeled on the Kennedy presidency.

This being a capitalist country, prosperity can only return if there is some stimulus to the economy. Of course prosperity is relative. During a period of prosperity the middle class might expand, the near poor can make do and the actual numbers of real poor may go down, but a whole lot more people would be happier than you have in today's situation.

In the past the kick-starts needed to bring prosperity have been both internal and external. Internal stimuli of the economy have included stuff like a great amount of money accumulated through slavery and used to invest in the growth of the country. In the 19th century there was the expansion of the railroads and all the jobs this created in industry along with the populating of the West with European descendants. Then in the 20th century came the automobile and with it came all the highway infrastructure along with new towns, hotels, and restaurants and expanded industry along the roads.

There has also been external stimuli, mainly in the form of wars and trade. We could extract raw materials from other countries and return finished goods to them. Wars used to also be a stimulus because they generated a huge need for supplies and employment for those who made these supplies. In these times the Pentagon already has a bloated budget so having a war doesn't create as many jobs. Today wars are a drain on the economy. And we've expanded trade about as far as it can go.

In the last three or four decades we have had nothing to stimulate the economy - nothing to bring that elusive prosperity. Over the past fifteen years or so economists talked about all the dotcoms jump starting the economy, but they brought good jobs to only a few people and data entry jobs to many. So when a politician is making all kinds of promises it isn't likely that there is money behind those promises.

So, the population is hurting and the presidential candidates are out there promising. Even if the winner is sincere in his or her promises that doesn't mean the best kind of changes will happen. That's because there may be a lack of vision or because the president must dance with those who brung him or her to the ball - the lobbyists and Wall Street types who are happy with the way the wealth is distributed. Remember a couple of months ago, one of Obama's top aides was caught telling Canadian officials not to worry about changing NAFTA. He and the rest of them can promise a lot on the campaign trail, but it's different backstage. There will be no boat rocking on many main issues. As Mario Cuomo said, "You campaign in poetry; you govern in prose."

Should the electee either be sincere or have his feet held to the fire by the populace (which is usually ahead of the president), there is still the question of how to do it. How to grow the economy? Some environmentalists claim that good jobs can be created if we should choose to transform to an environmentally-friendly society and all the changes to industry that it would involve. I'm no expert on that, but great. Great if it works.

Back during the Great Depression, the Roosevelt administration put people to work in the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps. Critics called these make-work jobs, but it put money in the pocket and bread on the table. You can still see the results of jobs well done in our state and national parks among other places. I've seen a lot that isn't make-work. The WPA and the CCC are exammples of the type of thing that could be created today which could stimulate the economy and benefit the nation. That bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis last year wasn't the only one in need of repair. The nation's infrastructure needs a lot of work.

There are many reasons to end the war in Iraq, but if for no other reason, the new president should end it because of the drain on the economy. He or she should also abrogate NAFTA. NAFTA was a boon to the investors, not the ordinary people of the three countries. Some people want to make the presence of undocumented immigrants into a campaign issue. It is no coincidence that the numbers of undocumented workers exploded after NAFTA came into being. Central Americans and Mexicans lost their jobs and got squeezed out of agricultural jobs when NAFTA began so they came here. NAFTA screwed them just like it screwed our industrial workers in Ohio.

Almost anybody would make a better president than what we have now (although the more we hear from John McCain we begin to wonder). Hopefully we'll get someone who can swing a few issues back towards what is needed by ordinary people. For the last thirty years it's been a situation of the rich getting richer, the middle class shrinking and the poor getting poorer. Some of the wealth needs to shift back. I would expect a little something better from the next president. I wouldn't expect great things.