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09/01/2003: "The Golden Age of Employment"

Labor Day is the traditional day to reflect on the state of American workers and work. Of course, any assessment of how well or ill American workers are doing has to be relative to how workers have done, are doing in other places, or might do in the future. To be a truly comprehensive assessment, all of these different comparisons must be made, even as all the assessments you will see today in your newspaper focus on how American workers are doing relative to a few years ago. From that perspective, things don’t look very good at all, considering that over 2.7 million jobs have been lost over the last three years, to say nothing of the bounty of stories on desperate jobseekers, unemployed for over a year, who are considering or have actually tried advertising their credentials at interstate exits on sandwich boards. As to how American workers are doing relative to other places, it seems to me to be a mixed bag, with a boom going on in China and big problems in other places. There is one comparison that makes the present situation for American workers look like nirvana. When you compare how workers are doing now versus how they will very likely be doing in, say, fifteen years, its clear that workers then will look back on the early 00’s as the Golden Age of Employment. While this vision doesn’t jive with the longstanding vision of a 21st century marked by space colonies and robot servants, it is consistent with basic demographic and fiscal trends. It all comes down to an idea stated fervently, and quite accurately, by none other that George W. Bush himself, that putting more money in people’s pockets translates to jobs. It’s doubtless true that massive deficit spending is creating jobs today – when you pull money out of thin air, that money translates to more jobs. Unfortunately, money doesn’t come out of thin air. In the case of deficit spending, this money comes from future generations. In other words, any new jobs we’re enjoying now come, by Bush’s own logic, at the cost of jobs held by future workers. Put yourself in their shoes for a moment. You’ll be paying interest on what will very likely be a $10 trillion dollar debt (it’s about $7 trillion now and growing at about half a trillion a year.) This interest, much of it paid to foreigners, will represent a pure drain on the economy far exceeding current military spending. In addition, the boomers will no longer be in their peak earning years and thus contributing large surpluses to the social security trust fund. That situation will have reversed, with the numerous and politically powerful boomers demanding continued and even expanded benefits. The social security trust fund “surplus” will be long gone, considering that the “trust fund” is really a device for making deficits look smaller than they actually are. Repudiation of the debt will likely be discussed but will not represent a viable solution, considering the global financial meltdown it would precipitate. The massive debt and boomer demands will thus start looking like the immovable object encountering the irresistible force, with future workers caught in the middle. There is actually a technical term used to describe such a labor situation: “involuntary servitude.” So my advice to workers today is to enjoy the good times while they last.