Troubled economic times breed jobs plans. In good times, no one puts forward comprehensive proposals to invigorate the economy. But we live in bad times, so we have lots of plans: Herman Cain’s fun-sounding 9-9-9 plan, Romney’s 59-point MBA-class-syllabus plan, the Huntsman‒Wall Street Journal editors plan, President Obama’s “Pass This Newest Stimulus Bill!” plan, and other plans from pundits, congressional candidates, and more — all indicators of a stressed economy.
What if we could wave a wand and immediately enact the best elements of the best plans? Would America bounce back? At one level, the answer is undoubtedly “yes.” Growth-oriented tax rates, entitlement reform, regulatory relief, and real health-care reform would lead to increased investment and new jobs. At another level, though, the answer is “maybe not.”
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Why? Because we seem to be going through a “crisis of aspiration” in America that was underway before the recession. This crisis has sources that are deeper than any jobs plan can address — at least in the near term.
A crisis of aspiration is not merely a crisis of ambition to pursue the American Dream, though it certainly includes that. It is also a crisis rooted in demographic realities and policy failures that make aspiring to a better life harder than it used to be, and not even worth the effort for some people. Jobs plans can help, but we need something more like a cultural renewal to reverse the trends that threaten America’s role as the world’s number-one “aspiration nation.”
How can we tell whether we are in a crisis of aspiration? Consider the following:
Job creation by new enterprises, which drive job growth in America, has been dropping over the past decade. The entrepreneurial backbone of the American economy has been weakening since before the recession. A recent Kauffman Foundation analysis shows that annual job creation by new companies has dropped by more than 45 percent since 2000. And new firms have been starting with fewer employees and staying smaller than in the past. Increasing productivity through technology has something to do with this, but it also seems clear that the environment for hiring new workers has been getting worse for a while. Policy changes can help with some of this, especially to the extent that new firms are stressed by rising health-care costs and regulatory burdens.
The rate of new-business creation in America has grown fragile. Not only are new businesses creating fewer jobs, there are fewer of them in the first place. New-firm formation started plummeting in 2006 and has fallen 27 percent since then as the recession took its toll. New businesses create most net new jobs, so we won’t return to healthy growth levels until we see a rebound in new-firm formation. Policy innovation can help here, too, but the following points are more policy-resistant.
The percentage of working-age Americans who are employed has been dropping for more than a decade. By 2007, the ratio of working-age Americans who were not gainfully employed was higher than the ratio in Europe. Europe! The ratio among Europeans has been improving steadily since the mid-1990s amidst labor-market reforms, but dropping in America since 2000. In fact, to get back to 2000 levels, we would need to gain 18 million jobs. In the 1990s we used to talk about instilling the virtue of work among welfare moms. Now more welfare moms are working, but lots of other people are not.
Young men, in particular, are less productive. For reasons no one fully understands, young men in America are about as low on ambition as they have ever been. Kay Hymowitz of the Manhattan Institute has documented a trend of prolonged adolescence among men in their 20s, marked by poorer employment prospects than women and a rapid rise in the percentage who delay marriage. Bill Bennett notes that 18- to 34-year-old men now spend more time playing video games than 12- to 17-year-olds — a sad picture of declining productivity. But the problem runs deeper. According to Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution, the decline in the percentage of gainfully employed working-age people discussed above is driven especially by a decades-long drop in male employment. Unlike the case with welfare reform, there are fewer policy levers we can pull to alter work incentives among men.
Just be glad that you kissed enough butt or knew someone to get a job as a writer.
Part of the problem is that people like you are so proud and also scared to lose their jobs that they never help, just huddle over the kitty bowl and tell the other cats where they've gone wrong.
I'm going to Occupy Wall Street because I'm tired of NRO telling me I'm just bitter at rich people...seems to me the problem might be deeper than that.
The granitic weight of governmental meddling in the life of the nation has crushed incentive, muddled ethics and flattened expectations. Policy? Back to basics -the constitution, limited government, the rule of law and aspirations will defeat entropy.
The fact that young men's job prospects are dimmer is in part (through my purely anecdotal observation in my own field)due to the large numbers of women coming into fields that in the past were majority-populated by men. For example, upon leaving the Navy my entry level job was selling television time at a local TV affiliate station. There was one lady on the sales staff of 10. Now, there might be 2-3 men on an entire sales staff. Having seen a few other industries, women are the back bone of most sales/business development departments.
You can't possibly mean that there's nothing wrong with that. Plenty wrong with that, on several levels, social, societal and cultural, just for starters. One of several elephants wandering about the room...
Your "return to basics" would take us back to an agricultural society in which most Americans were self-sufficient farmers. I believe that the good land has already been taken.
Government got involved to the extent it has because it was realized during the Great Depression, with 25% unemployed, that we are no longer a nation of small farming communities in which people were able to look after one another. On the other hand, we have also seen the dependency engendered in ordinary people and corporate leaders as well, which over-reliance on the government can bring. Unfortunately, we still have not produced a "happy medium" between the two in all these years. This is a political and moral failure of vision and will.
@Lemnos -
Normally I agree with your comments however, in this case, I would say that the solution you propose is only about one quarter of the real solution.
The real solution (and this is totally un-PC) is first, re-establish the father as the head of the house and the mother as the heart of the home. Second, establish the norm that father and mother are co-equal in their respective roles. Third, establish abstinence before marriage and fidelity within marriage.
What does this sound like? The old fashioned 10 Commandments.
Right. Let's get those old fashioned ten commandments going. Frankly, I think a couple of stonings would be effective, too.
And nothing builds a nation's character like old fashioned dentistry. I say pitch the novacaine and lasers and get back to good ol' pliers.
Give me the days when beer was sold in buckets and streets were good ol' dirt. That's when America had some cojones.
C. Norris is right as rain...we will NOT be a great nation again until men are placed back in total control of a household and women are back being co-equal behind closed doors.
roboturkey may wish to real an excellent article by Bruce Walker, titled "It is Not the Economy, Stupid" in the Sept. 30th American Thinker. There is more to life than ecnomics.
@Roboturkey
Ah, yes, I see the problem, you have a reading comprehension issue. Did you not see my statement of parents being co-equal in different roles? Or is co-equal too difficult of a word for you? I know it has more than one syllable and four letters, but I didn't think it would tax your reading ability.
I never advocated stoning, drunkeness, or lack of civilization. I guess you just hear what you want to hear.
The problem with the "establishing norms" is how to do that fairly without even bigger government.
As a male, I'd be happy if big government would simply stop impeding young male development. End affirmative action. Allow single sex public education. Stop assistance programs that in effect, marry low income women to government rather than men.
"assistance programs that in effect, marry low income women to government rather than men"
There's a sound bite with some bite..Poetry-grade economy of force in grammar and word usage. The Real Problem(tm) hoist from the noise and clearly displayed for all to ponder and wonder. Wow.
The "American Dream" has always been a myth, concocted to keep selling stuff that only serves to support the myth.
The "American Dream" depends on complacent workers, a docile and compliant electorate, acceptance of a rampaging global military empire, and the rise of a ruling oligarchy that actually benefits from all the shekels flowing into the "dream" sweepstakes.
We are now too crabby and informed to accept any of this. The TP people, the Occupy Wherever people, the tax revolutionaries, the displaced workers, and the battered veterans all know better. We all pretty much woke up from the "dream" and found out that it is manipulated hooey. And we see there is not a whit's difference between our ruling parties and the men who pay to keep them propped up.
Forever we will be too jaded to believe in whatever it was that powered the "American Dream". Anyone remotely receptive to the phrase "the pursuit of happiness" has looked elsewhere.
Anyone interested in antique relics like "The American Dream" needs to give us a better mythological paradigm if they want us to suspend belief again. These are cynical times demanding plain speaking.
Roboturkey has no delusions of grandeur. He merely claims to speak for the entire Tea Party Movement, Occupy Whatever Movement and enough other unorganized groups that he is the mouthpiece for everyone except the 27 or so people in the world who disagree with him. Nice work if you can get it.
As a Catholic conservative, I would love to say the problem can be fixed politically, as in the 80s. But I don't think so. I think we have bigger challenges than that.
I think there are several converging cultural trends that are squeezing people and especially younger generations:
1. The sexual revolution is finally coming home to roost. It works for one generation, perhaps two. After that, evolutionary psychology takes over and you end up with a horrific situation. If women's sexuality is not restrained in some fashion, the nerds who create civilization will play video games and watch pornography. No-fault divorce, presumed maternal custody and abortion-on-demand mean men have no rights whatsoever except that those women, not God, specifically grant to men. A mother chooses that her unborn child is a life; otherwise, she just kills it.
This could be fixed culturally and politically, except for political will.
2. We are living in a massive technological revolution, and this time it's a true revolutionary change. Print culture -- the mainstay for 500 years -- has died. The world and economy is really turning into a frightening global village of billions of people. Few people really know what to do next ... and many of the parents I know have no idea what to tell their children. There used to be a path ... study hard, work hard ... and you'll succeed. I have seen enough laid off engineers struggling to get by.
3. It sounds weird, but Alzheimer's. Maybe it's just me, but I know a lot of people in middle age whose life has become dominated by parents who have Alzheimers. It sucks the life out of caregivers, goes on and on almost without relief, and sucks up resources for no apparent purpose. It's the sixth leading cause of death in the U.S.
Anyway, to sum up, the problem is:
* an anti-male generation-long agenda that people have vastly underestimated, so don't wonder if younger males say, "Pardon?"
* a technological revolution that's creating enormous destruction and enormous opportunities; a juggernaut that cannot be ignored, and
* Alzheimer's and similar diseases that are causing enormous hardships.
That's what I suspect, but I'd like to know what others think.
Rate Of New Business Creation In America Has Grown Fragile: Why start a business when every level of government, from the city to the county to the state and finally the feds are all out to impede and penalize you in every conceivable way? Big businesses hire lobbyists to influence lawmakers to hammer somebody else—who protects the small business owners?
Percentage Of Working Age Americans Who Are Employed Has Been Dropping For More Than A Decade: Small businesses create the majority of jobs in America; fewer small businesses with greater regulatory controls make it harder and more expensive to hire new workers and pay them a living wage, much less give them raises and benefits as their skills and value to their employers increase.
Young Men, In Particular, Are Less Productive: Popular culture has been waging war on males since the ‘70s and the public schools are the front lines. The popular reasoning has been that men have been exploiters and oppressors throughout history and boys have been favored over girls, which limited women’s potential. ‘Educators’ have actively tried to limit boys’ development in favor of girls, emphasizing a feminist worldview instead of attempting to recognize that males and females are largely different in the ways that they learn and develop. Boys’ education should have continued to challenge them and require a sense of duty, while girls’ education should have been modified to allow them to develop more fully, instead of just reversing the one size fits all system to an all girl friendly emphasis. Now, everything seems to make things harder for males and there are set asides and ‘incentives’ for hiring and promoting females or members of other ‘disadvantaged’ groups.
Households Aren’t Forming The Way They Used To: Why should they when the vast majority of young men have been made an object of ridicule and contempt on most avenues of popular culture? When was the last time a popular television show featured a smart and capable father happily married to a woman who respected him? Add in the cultural glorification of the unwed mother and the divorce laws that penalize the primary breadwinner regardless of unfaithfulness, financial irresponsibility or emotional/physical abuse, and there is increasingly less reason for a man to marry and more to find some other venue to put his time and energy into.
The Lower Middle Class Is Starting To Look More Like The Welfare Class: See all of the above. The working class hero has been turned into a sullen thug who can’t provide a decent home for his family on an average wage at least in part because his employer has to p**s away half his incoming cash to comply with an ever increasing number of rules and regulations, and another enormous chunk has to go for fees and taxes. When it is far easier to use the government benefits those fees and taxes pay for than it is to earn a living, you can be sure that more people will take the slightly less remunerative ‘bennies’ than will decide to work and commute to make an extra pittance.
Since Occupy Wall Street wants to forgive all debts, if it looks like they will win, I’m going to max out the credit card. On ammo. I think this is the start of the entitlement riots I’ve been predicting for some time, because government cannot possible redeem its trillions of dollars in pledges. Most of the OWS crowd couldn’t organize a two-car funeral. They are totally ignorant of economics, and couldn’t reason to step two of their demands to save their lives. This is the failure of American Education made flesh. Someone should tell them, “Capitalism only works if you do.” I will link to this from my Old Jarhead blog.
Robert A. Hall
Author: The Coming Collapse of the American Republic
(All royalties go to a charity to help wounded veterans)
For a free PDF of the book, write tartanmarine(at)gmail.com
At the risk of being insensitive, the OWS-ers are just society's losers, who have always been vocal. The winners, people who have achieved the American Dream, are all around you but you won't notice them. They are too busy working and don't toot their own horns.
Your "return to basics" would take us back to an agricultural society in which most Americans were self-sufficient farmers. I believe that the good land has already been taken.
Government got involved to the extent it has because it was realized during the Great Depression, with 25% unemployed, that we are no longer a nation of small farming communities in which people were able to look after one another. On the other hand, we have also seen the dependency engendered in ordinary people and corporate leaders as well, which over-reliance on the government can bring. Unfortunately, we still have not produced a "happy medium" between the two in all these years. This is a political and moral failure of vision and will.
