Why Wall Street's Gain Has Been America's Loss
Arianna Huffington

 

Jobs -- everybody is in such total agreement that we need more of them that the word is in danger of becoming meaningless, of going from tangible policy to talking point. In Washington, saying you're for jobs has become just another obligatory, perfunctory throat-clearing preamble.

At a recent fundraiser Joe Biden pledged, "Some time in the next couple of months we're going to be creating between 250,000 jobs a month and 500,000 jobs a month."

That sounds great, if it's true -- a very big "if." But, even if it is true, the vice president didn't say what kind of jobs these are. And make no mistake: not all jobs are created equal.

Since the recession began in late 2007, we've lost 8.4 million jobs. Over 2 million of those were manufacturing jobs, the kind of jobs that have traditionally delivered American families into the middle class -- and kept them there. We lost 1.2 million manufacturing jobs in 2009 alone. And while job numbers go up and down, the loss of these blue-collar jobs has been going on for decades.

In 1950, manufacturing accounted for more than 30 percent of non-farm employment. As of last year, it's down to 10 percent. Indeed, one-third of all our manufacturing jobs have disappeared since 2000.

Yet the way that the useful section of our economy is being replaced by the useless section of our economy is rarely talked about in Washington. The numbers, however, don't lie: The share of our economy devoted to making things of value is shrinking, while the share devoted to valuing made up things (credit swap derivatives, anyone?) is expanding.

According to Thomas Philippon, professor at NYU's Stern School of Business, in 1947, the financial industry made up 2.5 percent of America's GDP. By 2006, just before the meltdown, it was 8.3 percent.

The trend is even starker when you look at the financial sector's share of U.S. business profits. As Simon Johnson recounted last year in The Atlantic, between 1973 and 1985, the financial industry's share of domestic corporate profits topped out at 16 percent. Just before the financial crisis hit, it stood at 41 percent.

That's right -- over 40 percent of the profits of the entire U.S. corporate sector went to the financial industry. James Kwak explains why this is a problem:

"Remember that financial services are an intermediate product -- that is, we don't eat them, or live in them, or put them on in the morning. They are supposed to enable a more efficient allocation of capital, so that the nonfinancial economy is more productive."

In other words -- it's supposed to serve our economy, not become our economy.

But isn't wringing our hands over the loss of manufacturing jobs the 21st century equivalent of 19th century concerns about America turning from an agrarian society into an industrial one? Isn't America's future to be found in newer, better, more modern service industry jobs?

Actually, no -- for a number of reasons.

For starters, it turns out that manufacturing jobs aren't just more productive and valuable than jobs in the Wall Street casino -- they're also more valuable than service jobs. As economist and author Jeff Madrick points out:

"Making goods is on balance -- with exceptions -- more productive than providing services, and rising productivity is the fundamental source of prosperity. . . . Without something to export, a nation will either become overindebted or forced to reduce its standard of living."

In other words, in the absence of manufacturing, the only way to compete with Third World nations is to become a Third World nation, which is exactly what will happen if we allow our middle class to disappear.

What's more, it's not just manufacturing and lower-skilled service jobs that are disappearing. According to the Hackett Group, companies with revenues of $5 billion and over are expected to take an estimated 350,000 jobs offshore in the next two years alone.

Even more troubling is the reason so many of these jobs are being sent overseas. It's not just about cost control. "What used to be a tactical labor cost-saving exercise," according to a 2006 study by Booz Allen Hamilton, "is now a strategic imperative of competing for talent globally." America's talent pool is drying up. At the same time the demand for these highly skilled workers is growing, the number of Americans earning master's degrees and Ph.D.s in engineering has fallen.

This is what happens when a country is willing to spend trillions of dollars fighting unnecessary wars while allowing college tuition to rise out of the reach of so many of its citizens. And it's what happens when a country turns its economy over to the casino of Wall Street.

It's not too late to change course. The financialization of our economy didn't just happen. Decisions were made that made it possible -- and decisions can be unmade. But first we need to decide, as a country, what kind of economy we want to have: one that's good for middle class families or one that's built to enrich Wall Street.

It's time to start separating the real economy from the casino economy. And to make sure that with all the talk in Washington about "jobs," we don't let the platitudes become a substitute for urgently needed policies.

 

 

Why Wall Street's Gain Has Been America's Loss

 

(c) 2010 U.S. William Pfaff