The quote in the title is from my late father. It was an answer he gave me when I asked him, as a teenager, why the conservatives, who are supposedly so good for business, hadn't managed to lower the unemployment rate. He went on:
Think about it. If there aren't enough jobs for everyone, your boss has you where he wants you. You won't complain. You'll think twice about calling in sick. You are constantly aware that there are hundreds of people who want your job. Which boss wouldn't like that?
When I moved to the United States in the spring 1991, it was not because of any freedoms (with the ever-popular plural s) I had been denied in Germany. It was because I had received my degree in the fall of 1989, and a "real" (i.e. one that remotely resembled my field and paid halfway decently) job had failed to materialize. My best paid gig so far had been a temp job in the warehouse of an umbrella factory. It might have turned into a permanent position, but the work was so mind-numbing and tedious and the environment was so depressing that I left after my initial contract was up.
My parents were extremely upset with me. I told them the thought of staying there for any length of time, much less until retirement, was enough to make me consider suicide. My mother replied, "Well, that's what the real world of work is like. You better get used to it. Grow up already." I told my parents not to worry; I would get something else.
I did. I called my American then-boyfriend, whom I had met as an exchange student in Texas, and accepted the proposal he had made last time I had seen him in person. Two months later I was married, another three months later I had a Green Card and a job -- as a secretary in a fundie church, of all places. Still, it was better than standing on my feet and sorting umbrellas eight hours a day. Pastor Bill, my boss, was a wingnut but also a great source of entertainment. Besides, this was just a start, I thought. In the "Land of Unlimited Opportunity" (as Germans call the US), better jobs would come my way (and they did).
Back when I first came here, the US did not have the unemployment rates we see today, but in Germany they had been the "new normal" for at least a decade. Full employment had not been reality since the 1970s.
My new American friends and in-laws were quick to point out the reasons why. Western Europeans, they said, don't work hard enough and demand too much vacation time and benefits, so nobody wants to start or keep a business there anymore. If everybody in Germany agreed to cut down their vacation time to two weeks and worked more than forty hours a week for about five bucks an hour, things would be wonderful again. But no, the evil unions had ruined the Germans' work ethics.
This sounded a lot like what I had heard from my CDU-voting friends. If we forced people to work harder, they said, jobs would come our way. To me that didn't make sense. One of the reasons the work week had been shortened and vacation time lengthened was so that there would be more jobs to go around. If fewer people worked more, there would be even more unemployed workers, wouldn't there?
Conservative politicians would tell us that it was the workers' fault that jobs were scarce. Business owner HAD to offshore and outsource because Germans are simply too expensive to employ. So why didn't everyone work for less and let others have jobs, too? Why be so selfish?
Well (duh), if you have a job, it's nice to make enough money to, like, be able to live, right? You can't survive in Europe on an Indian salary. There is a limit to the race to the bottom.
My father (reluctant middle management in a large printing business) explained to me that it wasn't just the wages that eliminated people's jobs. The main reason was technology. He said when he first started working at his place of employment, there were twenty printing presses on one particular floor. At each machine, there was a journeyman printer and several assistants, all working full time.
Thirty years later, on the same floor there were only four machines, fully automated, and one dude with an engineering degree. EACH of the four new machines printed three times as many newspapers as the twenty old ones put together.
An entire subsidiary business within the company conglomerate was closed down because its purpose had become obsolete due to modern printing techniques. The people there could have worked their butts off for twenty cents an hour, but it wouldn't have saved their jobs.
The CDU has lured voters for decades by saying it will save jobs by keeping employers happy. These days, even here in America, we now see how that works out. Yet, people keep voting CDU against their own interest. Sounds familiar?
Lowering unemployment is the carrot that the conservatives dangle in front of voters, similar to what the Republican party has done with abortion. After many years of Republicans in power, abortion is still legal. Yet so-called pro-lifers keep voting Republican.
Voters in Germany had enough after sixteen years of Helmut Kohl. They were ready to give Gerhard Schroeder a chance, who had promised to lower employment. Unfortunately, that's a promise he couldn't keep. I don't see how any politician could keep it. As long as businesses find it profitable to outsource, offshore, or hire undocumented workers, they find ways to do it. And no matter what the power structure in the parliament is, they find political accomplices.
Mr. Schroeder could not fix unemployment. The only reason he was re-elected was Angela Merkel, who, at the time, was in favor of entering the war in Iraq, to keep Bush happy. People held their noses and voted SPD because they felt that high unemployment was better than high unemployment AND war. Fortunately, by the time Schroeder's coalition fell apart, Angela had come to her senses.
Unemployment rates go up and down, but when they go down, they never go as far down as they were before. It's kind of like gasoline prices. It's no longer four bucks a gallon, but it'll never be 99 cents again either.
The reason I'm not freaking out as much about the current job situation as my native-born American friends is because I'm used to it. I also don't blame President Obama. He cannot declare himself supreme dictator of the world and take over the economy. If you want to blame someone, follow the money. Who is benefiting from the economy the way it is? And which candidates do these people support?