Obama Solution to Stop Outsourcing: Stop Counting Jobs Outsourced (No, Seriously!)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010030903/obama-solution-stop-outsourcing-stop-counting-jobs-outsourced-no-seriously

By Mike Elk March 3, 2010 - 2:17pm ET

The numbers are outrageous, sickening even. How can anyone stand to look at them?

Since 2000, the U.S. has lost 5.5 million manufacturing jobs, with 2.1 million of those jobs being lost in the last two years alone. Since 2001, over 42,400 factories have closed in the U.S., and another 90,000 are considered at severe risk of closing. The last time so few were employed in manufacturing was in 1941, before World War II spending pulled that sector out of its Great Depression slump.

Numbers like these make me want to cry.

So President Obama has come up with a big and bold solution to deal with the problem. He's going to shut down the federal office that counts how many jobs are being shipped overseas.

It’s like ignoring a bully that picks on you in grade school. If we just ignore companies like Whirlpool that take stimulus money and ship jobs overseas—maybe they will stop doing it.

That will show those big multinational companies. Hit them where it really hurts—in their egos.

Seriously, folks, this is what President Obama is really proposing. From The Washington Post:

Like a scorekeeper for the world, a tiny unit within the Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks globalization's winners and losers, and the results are not always pretty for the United States. Manufacturing jobs here, for example, have fallen faster since 1979 than in Canada, Germany or Japan. Compensation for those jobs dropped here in 2008 but jumped in South Korea and Australia.

Soon, however, Americans may be spared the demoralization in these numbers: The White House wants to shutter the unit that produces them.

President Obama's budget would eliminate the International Labor Comparisons office and transfer its 16 economists to expand the bureau's work tracking inflation and occupational trends.

FULL story at link.

[FiveGoodMen]

1. Precisely what Bush would do.

[Craftsman]

13. Both parties are now whole owned by Wall St.

[Grand Taurean]

2. This is what Bush would do.

Bush had the Federal Reserve stop publishing M3 (the amount of new money entering the economy from the Fed) after December 2003.

[Coyote_Bandit]

3. Everyday

I lose a little more respect for the Obama administration. They have proven to be nothing more than a lost opportunity. This is just another reason for that.

[jdlh8894]

5. I concur

Seems like emotions took over @ the voting booth.

[thunder rising]

4. com'on don't you feel better not having to look at the truth. lighten up.

[LongTomH]

6. Cross-post this to GD!

Everyone needs to read it!

Oh yeah! K & R :kick:

[gateley]

7. WHY does he want to eliminate it? nt

[Dragonfli]

8. My Guess: If the numbers are damning then Damn the numbers! (like hiding the murder weapon) /nt

[gateley]

10. If that's true, we need to get this OUT THERE -- to KO, Rachel, Ed, Weiner, et al

to shine the light on it.

I'm going to do that right now.

[ncteechur]

9. That is a lot of assuming from the WP article. Sounds like FDL.

I call bullshit.

[gateley]

11. To those who are bemoaning that this is just like Bush, work on getting this

OUT THERE -- shine a light on it. KO, Rachel, Ed, Weiner, et al --

What the fuck good does it do to just complain? I'm going to at least TRY to see if we can do something about it.

Suit yourselves, though.

[jgraz]

12. Fuck. What next?

:banghead: