
{"id":20297,"date":"2011-08-18T12:42:02","date_gmt":"2011-08-18T16:42:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=20297"},"modified":"2011-08-18T12:42:02","modified_gmt":"2011-08-18T16:42:02","slug":"letter-to-president-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2011\/08\/18\/letter-to-president-obama\/","title":{"rendered":"Letter to President Obama"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Vicky Dickson<br \/>\n<\/strong><br \/>\nDear President Obama,<\/p>\n<p>I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m glad that, after the debt ceiling debacle, you can now turn your attention back to our country\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dismal employment situation. But I do find it ironic that you met the leaders of Xerox, Johnson &#038; Johnson, American Express and other multinationals at the White House last week to discuss their ideas for spurring job growth. With Department of Commerce figures indicating that U.S. multinationals cut their workforces at home by 2.9 million between 2000 and 2010 while increasing their overseas workforces by 2.4 million, and with Fox News reporting that in 2010 American companies created 1.4 million jobs overseas while creating fewer than a million domestically, it seems to me that multinationals are part of the problem, rather than its solution. <\/p>\n<p>It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not that I blame the multinationals. Their existence is predicated on making profits, so if they can pay Chinese workers a tenth of what Americans need to live on and thereby increase their profits, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll certainly be rewarded by their shareholders for doing so. And punished if their competitors do a better job at outsourcing than they do.<\/p>\n<p>I also don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t blame companies for investing their profits in technology that replaces workers. The efficiencies that technology can bring should lead to even higher profits, and hopefully more overall wealth. But I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m very concerned about the number of jobs that can, and will, be lost in the process. When I think, for instance, about the jobs that will be rendered obsolete when e-books replace paper ones \u00e2\u20ac\u201c from the lumberjacks to the paper company machine operators to the bookstore employees \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t imagine how the higher profits that will be accrued will lead to a net increase in jobs for Americans. Especially if the companies that accrue those profits either decide to hoard their cash (as Apple is doing) or invest it overseas.<\/p>\n<p>Government should not, and probably cannot, stop multinationals from outsourcing jobs, or computers from replacing human employees. It probably also can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do much about the weak consumer demand that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s resulted from the dramatic drop nationwide in the home equity that fueled so much borrowing and purchasing when times were flush.<\/p>\n<p>But what it can do is be a stabilizing force when our economy faces such powerful headwinds. It can increase its investment in the infrastructure \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the roads and bridges, the education and health of the workforce \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that has always enabled American business to survive and prosper. I know that you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve stressed this sort of investment in your stimulus packages, but I fear that the tea party\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s anti-government message has simply drowned out public awareness of the positive effects of that stimulus. <\/p>\n<p>Tea party propaganda also ignores the positive effects that government workers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 paychecks have on the businesses those employees frequent. And so I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m afraid that the budget cuts you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve recently agreed to, in your effort to negotiate with people who won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t compromise, will hurt small businesses all over the country at a time when they can least afford it.<\/p>\n<p>My husband and I own a small weekly newspaper. Despite launching the paper at a particularly inauspicious time (March 2007), we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve managed to keep five or six people employed. The printing bills we pay help keep our printer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s employees working, and the free ads we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve given to nonprofits undoubtedly benefit their employees. Then there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s rent and utility payments, which go to local businesses and in turn help them stay alive. So our investment has a very real and positive effect on the American job market.<\/p>\n<p>But thanks to our Republican state legislature, the university in our town is facing budget cuts, potentially $100 million of them, and the loss of that money will inevitably reverberate throughout our community. When those who lose their jobs quit going out to eat and buying goods and services, the small businesses that serve them may have to quit advertising, or be forced out of business altogether \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which could hurt our business. And that would decrease the revenue coming into state and federal coffers as well as that going to local business, in a downward spiral that I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t foresee ending well. <\/p>\n<p>So I would urge you, if you want to develop policies that could increase employment in this country rather than hasten that downward spiral, to listen to the country\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s small-business owners. Not the ones the Republicans seem so concerned about, the tiny minority who take out more than $250,000 a year from their businesses, but the vast number who struggle just to keep their doors open and their workers employed \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the owners of the companies that will never outsource their workers, or replace them all with machines. I also urge you to increase, rather than cut, the government funding that can, in these difficult economic times, provide a real lifeline to those companies.  <\/p>\n<p>Sincerely,<br \/>\nVicky Dickson<\/p>\n<p><em>Vicky Dickson is co-owner of The Carrboro Citizen.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m glad that, after the debt ceiling debacle, you can now turn your attention back to our country\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dismal employment situation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20297"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20383,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20297\/revisions\/20383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}