Earlier we asked, Where are the Stimulus Jobs? USA Today has quite a tidbit on where the Stimulus jobs are not.
States hit hardest by the recession received only a few of the government's first stimulus contracts, even though the glut of new federal spending was meant to target places where the economic pain has been particularly severe.
USA Today reviewed details in the Federal Procurement Data System and this is what they found:
In Michigan, for example — where years of economic tumult and a collapsing domestic auto industry have produced the nation's worst unemployment rate — federal agencies have spent about $2 million on stimulus contracts, or 21 cents per person. In Oregon, where unemployment is almost as high, they have spent $2.12 per capita, far less than the nationwide average of nearly $13.
the first contracts have amounted to only about $7.42 per person on average in the eight states with unemployment rates higher than 10% last month. By comparison, government records show it has awarded about $26 worth of contracts per person in North Dakota, whose unemployment rate is the nation's lowest
Perhaps it's time to stop bringing in foreign guest workers and instead, states who have low unemployment numbers and big Stimulus bucks, recruit for workers in states with high unemployment numbers and no Stimulus bucks?
Nah, that would make way too much sense.
There is the problem that ...
... given our insistence on spending five to ten times as much on imprisoning people as is done in the civilized world, we don't have enough left over in state budgets to educate people. And at the same time, the Reagan focus on creating slack labor markets, maintained by Clinton and the Bushes, has led to massive qualifications inflation in many fields, as employers have gone from what they need to what they would substantially benefit from to arbitrary hurdles to get the most gung ho, least trouble making people.
The people in the high unemployment states are often not qualified to do the jobs filled by foreign guest workers, and since the foreign guest workers are far less likely to do inconvenient things like organizing for their rights, it makes a lot of sense for the corporate bottom line to specify arbitrary requirements that unemployed workers for high unemployment states have difficulty in filling.
On the other hand, the concept that we can fix this if only we have enough xenophobia has its own pitfalls.
xenophobia?
No, clearly you do not know the statistics on what is going on with guest workers and no they are not here because they have skills not available in the United States, which has been shown in study after study, from the GAO to the NAB.
Also, we don't do that absurd racist xenophobe insult here on EP.
This is why politically I'm a Cascadia Separatist
Our economy here in Washington, Oregon, British Columbia, and Alaska is more tied to the Pacific Rim than to our distant governments in Washington DC and Ontario- as economically and physically distant as the colonies were from England in 1776.
We need a federal government that reflects that.
-------------------------------------
Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.
-------------------------------------
Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.