By

Dr. Sherman N. Miller

1/20/2008

The US economy is now in a tailspin with President George Bush and the US Congress scrambling to attempt to come up with a stimulus package to prevent a full-blown economic recession in the midst of the 2008 Presidential Election year. The time for pointing fingers at who caused the current economic collapse has passed. But the speculators may find themselves vilified for not thinking about the good of the nation in their pursuing get rich quick schemes.

The game of exploiting psychological shortages to drive up prices in the energy market and put fissures in the global economy is over. One got the impression that the price of oil is being set by geopolitical events and adverse weather conditions with a sprinkle of newscasters suggesting politicians’ impotence to change the direction of the price of oil.

Today the American consumer is characterized as being in economic bondage from escalating energy prices, the subprime mortgage melt down, job outsourcing, and the exodus of high paying manufacturing jobs to low cost labor nations. Globalization has meant that US business practices morphed to a mindset of third world nations where it may be okay to treat workers as quasi-slaves. Job security is an illusion of grandeur because one bad management may mean the advent of a series of downsizings to define a new successful business model or at worst disseverment of the corporation from bankruptcy.

It seems difficult to believe that the US public got duped into believing in the so-called information age job mindset where manufacturing products is low in status, so these low skill jobs were exported to cheap labor third world nations. It is difficult to believe that the US cannot compete with low cost labor nations by the full development of robotics, so high paying manufacturing jobs would stay in America. It seems difficult to believe that third world people are now doing US customer service jobs while major corporations are announcing thousands of white collar job cut backs each week as a fall out of the current credit crisis.

Clearly the key issue in the 2008 Presidential and US Congressional campaigns is the need for a paradigm shift in leadership thinking where we start once again to believe that Americans can accomplish whatever we set our minds to. As a long time Republican, it is difficult for me to say that Senator Barack Obama appears to be the only Presidential candidate at this point that offers hope of a new direction. My own Republican candidates are spending too much time proving how conservative they are, and Senator Hillary Clinton is clearly old school politics as usual.

However, there is one silver lining in the current economic crisis. Al Qaeda must be nervous as a harlot at an upper crust gala that their military leverage on the world economy at the moment is drying up as evidence by the subprime mortgage crisis pushing energy shortages off the global radar screen. It is difficult to justify energy shortages with the oil demand becoming more unsubstantiated every day. Alternative energy sources are starting to move from the realm of lip service to national security and global industries appear to have made the conscious decision to break the oil monopolistic control on the world economy.

At the risk of being labeled a nativist, I believe a globalization virus infected the US corporate psyche to where the continued expansion of the Rust Bowl is a leading barometer of the defrocking of the American worker. When you read about American workers going from 16 to 20 dollars per hour manufacturing jobs to fast food or minimum wage jobs, you must be touched by the disintegration of America’s standard of living.

Hence, an underpinning issue in the 2008 General Election is the reincarnation of the US worker as a valued labor force that can be competitive on a global scale. It is time to vilify outsourcing, downsizing, speculating, and moving high paying manufacturing jobs overseas as being signs of shortsighted management. If we want America to offer prosperity to our children and grandchildren, corporate allegiance by US workers must be our mantra of success.