WILLIAM O'ROURKE
A tale of two countries
Tue Sep 2 20:24:46 2003
67.1.146.14

http://www.suntimes.com/output/orourke/cst-edt-rour31.html

A tale of two countries

August 31, 2003

BY WILLIAM O'ROURKE




This Labor Day weekend we don't have a tale of two cities, but a tale of two
countries. In one country, large segments of those out of work are paid
their full salaries by the U.S. government; in the other, unemployment
benefits are limited and many have stopped looking for jobs altogether. In
one country, old and dilapidated electricity grids are being rebuilt, and in
the other, electricity disappeared for nearly a quarter of the population
for 24 hours. One has public works projects funded by the richest nation in
the world, and in the other, it is pay as you go. We open one country's jail
doors, and in the other the prison population has reached an all-time high.

Of course, the countries are Iraq and the United States.

We are currently spending more than $4 billion a month in Iraq, and
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has asked for more. We are working day
and night to get Iraq's oil production up to speed, have started job
programs of every sort and are handing out hundred-dollar bills to the
general population like John D. Rockefeller distributed dimes to children in
the early 1900s.

This Labor Day we have an anti-worker labor secretary who wants to eliminate
overtime pay for 8 million, an administration that would like to de-unionize
any business that is still covered by a collective-bargaining agreement, and
a president who fought hard to keep organized labor out of any division of
Homeland Security--and wants no labor unions created in Iraq.

Here good economic news is bad news. Productivity is up 5.7 percent--the
historic average is 2 percent. How this magic was brought about was
described by an indiscreet management consultant quoted last month in the
Wall Street Journal: ''Employers are saying if I can't raise prices, I'll
raise productivity. Employers are flogging their workers to get more out of
them as a means to increase profits.''

''Flogging'' is a good word for it: ugly, but accurate. The recession was
declared over in November 2001, but the unemployment rate is 6.2 percent.
And there have been thousands of jobs lost in every sector of the economy,
except for the category ''temporary help.'' Nearly 3 million jobs have been
lost since Bush became president. Only he and Herbert Hoover share such a
record.

Economists point out that economic growth used to mean jobs, but not
anymore. Between 1950 and 1962 there was an 81 percent relationship between
gross domestic product and unemployment. That has declined between 1990 and
2002 to 59 percent. Since more output should equal more jobs, the present
economy is considered dysfunctional.

In Europe, citizens have complained of interrupting their vacations to
attend funerals of the summer's heat-related dead. They take their vacations
seriously over there; so seriously, European central banks refrain from
making any official pronouncements about the economy during August.

President Bush has a European's appetite for long vacations. Doubtless, his
administration might consider a Works Progress Administration program for
homeland infrastructure (bridges, roads, water, electricity) if it could
give the business to friends without any competitive bidding. That's how
Halliburton Co. got much of its work in Iraq.

Over in Iraq we are attempting to establish democracy, and here Attorney
General John Ashcroft is sent around the country to friendly audiences to
defend the elimination of rights in the Patriot Act.

The government is deficit-spending with abandon. But here we are cutting
taxes for the wealthy and transferring the debt to our children, while
cutting the classes they can take at state universities because our
government has no money for that sort of foolishness, whereas the sky's the
limit for our wholly owned subsidiary, the country of Iraq.

In the bad old days--unless these are the bad old days--the predatory
corporation Enron paid a lot of money to have a baseball stadium named after
it. The amounts we are spending in Iraq should give us naming privileges.
Any suggestions? Enjoy Labor Day.

• Killing of Ayatollah Is Start of Iraqi Civil War — William O. Beeman, Tue Sep 2 23:06