Liberal Patriotism

The recessions of the recent past could be "cured" with a variety of conservative nostrums — lower government spending and tax cuts being among the most common.

The current one will only end with liberal solutions.

The reason can be found in employment, a lagging indicator in any recession. It's high and getting higher. Conservative policies won't bring it down.

The good news is that rising unemployment is defying real economic growth. The economy is on track to grow at a 3% annual rate this quarter and to keep growing. Productivity among all sorts of workers is enormous and growing. Few have suffered pay cuts, which helped keep the Great Recession going so long. We work hard for the money and we earn it.

The problem is a disconnect between what business needs and what the labor market can provide:

• Low-skill businesses want to pay low-end wages only "illegal aliens" can live on, because they're not raising American families but trying to create them. 
• High-skill businesses can't find the skills they need right away, at the point of demand, so they're hiring immigrants on H1-B visas as fast as they can.

The jobs are out there. They're just going to Mexican dishwashers and Indian computer technicians.

The only possible solution is policies that let Americans get these jobs. Kicking the foreigners out at this point only means the jobs don't get done.

• Dirty jobs need to pay a wage Americans will work for, and can live on. And employers can't afford a 40% tax on top of those wages for health insurance. That's a cost that needs to be shared.
• Clean jobs will go to Americans only if Americans are educated and trained to do them. We need to work with business and educators to increase the supply of qualified labor so imports can decline.

Thus there is a need for liberal solutions like a rising minimum wage, organizing workers to keep wages high, guaranteed health care for all Americans and better education and training for our people.

Conservatives want to keep hiring Mexicans and Indians. Liberals want to hire Americans. So patriotism is the call that must win the day.

Businesses will scream bloody murder that they can't afford higher costs. But the low-wage jobs available today can only be done here — they can't be outsourced. Whether we're talking about cleaning hotel rooms, building bridges or a thousand other dirty jobs, these are things Americans will do if the wages and working conditions are right. Time to ask why they're not, and demand that they be that way.

The skills gap is going to be harder to bridge. There you can outsource. That's where improving American education comes in — not just traditional education but online education and college education. Curricula need to meet business needs. Business must communicate with education, through government, about those needs, and people have to be willing to work and learn the needed skills.

It's going to take a lot of money. That comes from changing priorities. It doesn't come from cutting taxes and it's the opposite of cutting spending. Government needs to meet the needs of business, and to do that we'll need to spend money on education and training, not tax breaks.

Patriotism is the way to sell it

If you're on America's side you should be looking for ways to hire Americans. You can't create a servant class of foreigners on the one hand and pretend to be protecting Americans from predators (government or otherwise) on the other. You can't deny health care to your workers, oppose all plans to extend care to them, and call yourself a loyal American businessman. You can't be importing foreigners by the boatload and opposing the education investments we need to get you real American workers who will do those jobs.

You can't say you're loyal on the one hand and act disloyally on the other. You can't fly a big flag on the one hand and treat other Americans with disdain on the other. You can't have Americans as customers with one hand and deny them the ability to afford those products on the other.

All this crap about "socialism" coming from the right is just that — crap. The answer to it is practical patriotism. Not what are you doing for your country so much as what are you doing for your fellow Americans. Are your wages, benefits and working conditions such that no American citizen will take the jobs you're offering? Increase them. Are the skills you're requiring unavailable in the current market? Tell us what they are and let us teach them.

This is the kind if jiu jitsu we must perform on the right not for political reasons but for practical ones. A healthy economy grows for the people who work within it. All of them.

We can't let today's unemployed become an army of homeless people, of discouraged workers spoiling for a fight. That's bad for business. It is what the Right wants — notice how they demonize immigrants even while offering them employment and you squat. But it's what America needs.

It's time for the real Americans to stand up.