Finding Common Ground

I am not sure which is more scary: a) that I agree with Pat Buchanan's views in his new article: Morning in Which America? or b) that most people won't read it and/or think about what he is saying.

“[W]ith the lowest number of people employed as a share of the population since 1994, there is still a plentiful supply of unused labor looking for jobs,” writes the Times. “When Castle Harlan advertised ... to fill 70 to 80 positions at a Morton’s restaurant it opened in early July in White Plains, 600 to 700 people showed up.”

These numbers frame the issue for Bush vs. Kerry. Is it morning in America again? Or are we breaking up into the “two Americas”? And the deeper crisis remains unaddressed by either party.

In a global economy, how do U.S. workers win steady pay hikes, when hundreds of millions of foreign workers are able and willing to take their jobs at far less pay and to work longer hours with fewer benefits?

Does either party have a plan for dealing with the four forces driving down American wages, permanently?

The first is deindustrialization, the closing of U.S. factories to transfer production abroad. Some 2.6 million U.S. manufacturing jobs have disappeared in three years. While most of these workers found new jobs in the service economy, they are earning less.

The second is outsourcing via the Internet of white-collar jobs to Asia. These are not just call-center jobs, but are in accounting, medicine, computer programming, engineering, architecture.

Either way, he is right about the sad state of our economy. I just wish the candidates would find time to talk about it instead of wasting so much time on the differences between someone who went to Vietnam to serve his country and someone who did not.