If you want to attack an unfair tax cut system, that's fine -- but the lack of job growth won't change when we get a Democrat in the White House in 2004.
Economists described the time after the 1990-1991 recession as a jobless recovery. GDP improved and productivity improved, but employment numbers stagnated way beyond what was typical. Then we had big productivity gains all through the 1990s. Now we had a new downturn, with lots and lots of layoffs, and now, we're again seeing stagnant emplyment numbers.
The problem is bigger than something that can be solved with properly targeted tax cuts. Our economy has changed. Everyone decries the loss of manufacturing jobs in the rust belt, but nobody will acknowledge that these job losses are the result of productivity increases. We ship more steel now than we did 10 years ago. Manufacturing isn't dying. Look at the Manufacturing component of the Industrial Production Index put out by the Federal Reserve. Manufacturing is up 2.3% over 12 months ago, and the long-term trend is undeniably up.
Think about farming -- in Roman times, something like 40% of the population worked in agriculture. Now, less than five percent of the population works in agriculture, but it would be false to say that agriculture is dying. Instead, technology has made workers so productive that we just don't need to employ so many people. That's what's happening in manufacturing now.
It just doesn't take the same number of people to produce the same amount of goods any more. But nobody wants to talk about that -- instead, we'll use this long-term trend as a way to beat down Bush. That might be good strategy, but if the Democrats don't plan for the long term, then in four years they'll lose the White House again for the same reason. We're at the end of an era. The American prosperity boom starting in the 1950s depended on high-paying manufacturing jobs. That industry just doesn't need to employ the numbers it used to.
About 150 years ago, Manchester, New Hampshire was an economic powerhouse and the center of the North American textile industry. Then technology made textiles no longer an expensive product, so Manchester is now like half of its earlier population. We need to talk about how to prevent the US from following that path.