One annual Washington ritual took place Tuesday
evening. As usual, per George Will’s recent
column, it was more of a pep rally than anything information-sharing, with the traditional
rundown of actually and supposedly good things from Barack Obama’s fifth year
in office, along with the usual list of what the president would like to see.
As for employment, Obama did of course pay lip service to it. After bragging about “the more than 8 million
new jobs our businesses have created over the past four years,” which readers
of this blog know was only enough to cover the country’s adult population
increase, and the “lowest unemployment rate in over five years,” almost
completely due to people leaving the labor force, he spent a sentence, transcribed
as its own paragraph, saying that the recent budget compromise should
facilitate job creation. After tipping
his hat to the two greatest reasons why the employment crisis is permanent,
automation and globalization, he pittered out into general statements about economic
inequality and the red herring of more training and education. His best idea of the speech, lowering taxes
for employers of Americans, went out but went nowhere. He got close to suggesting the WPA-style jobs
project the country increasingly needs, but seemed to tie it to higher wages
than would be workable. His subsequent advocacy
of manufacturing hubs and domestic energy jobs sounded good but also fell
short, with recognition of neither the reasons why “entire industries… based on
vaccines that stay ahead of drug-resistant bacteria or paper-thin material that’s
stronger than steel” aren’t more prominent now nor of the roadblocks put up by
environmentalists, whom he seemed to placate, repeatedly, in the next several
minutes. Then, off to job training
programs (wrong), more unemployment benefits (right), more and more higher
education with emphasis on career preparation (not the problem; just ask your
local degreed, poorly employed millennial), conflicting sentences about women
deserving “equal pay for equal work” (the law for 51 years) but their lower
average pay being “wrong” and “an embarrassment,” and, consistent with his
words of the past few weeks, a higher minimum wage. By mentioning expanding the Earned Income
Credit, Obama made an intriguing feint towards guaranteed income, which, except
for a hope for “honest work” being “plentiful,” ended his words on jobs for the
speech.
All told, we should expect very little on employment from
the executive branch over the next three years.
Why? Mainly because Obama’s
problem is the same one many Republicans have had – he is just too beholden to
others in his party and has not found the courage to break free from them. If he wants to make jobs an overriding or
even truly major priority, why is he pushing for a higher minimum wage? If American energy positions are important to
him, then why doesn’t he approve the Keystone pipeline? If he sincerely wants to put Americans back
to work, then why is he getting stuck with non-solutions such as training for
jobs that don’t exist, and conflicting and peripheral issues like ending alleged
overall sex discrimination? What, if
anything, will he give up to get what he wants?
Barack Obama is a very successful politician. He knows it is important to give people the
impression that he cares about them and their problems. That is his job, and, indeed, there was
something for everybody to agree with on Tuesday. But that doesn’t mean we need to believe anything
substantive about the issue of not enough employment, or anything else for that
matter, is on the way.
America is going nowhere on jobs. Barring a collective Washington epiphany
about the permanence of the crisis, that will not change for over 1,000
days. Our next president may or may not
be better. Whether Republican, Democrat,
or something else, he or she will have ample opportunity to address the largest
personal prosperity-related crisis the country has faced since the Industrial
Revolution. However, to do that, as
Obama’s comments underscored this week, neither party’s ideas alone will even
come close, and our current president won’t either.