Two Americas

Herbert Gans in the New York Times:

When the jobless recovery ends and the economy is restored to good health, today’s surplus will be reduced. New technology and the products and services that accompany it will create new jobs. But unless the economy itself changes, eventually many of these innovations may be turned over to machines or the jobs may be sent to lower-wage economies.

In fact, if modern capitalism continues to eliminate as many jobs as it creates — or more jobs than it creates — future recoveries will not only add to the amount of surplus labor but will turn a growing proportion of workers into superfluous ones.

What could be done to prevent such a future? America will have to finally get serious about preserving and creating jobs — and on a larger, and more lasting, scale than Roosevelt’s New Deal. Private enterprise and government will have to think in terms of industrial policy, and one that emphasizes labor-intensive economic growth and innovation. Reducing class sizes in all public schools to 15 or fewer would require a great many new teachers even as it would raise the quality of education.

Kevin Riordan in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Like other members, Davis, Pizzo and Kramer say they want to restore the patriotic, exceptional, constitutional America they remember.

They believe in God and in hard work. They want immigration laws enforced and English spoken, and they want America to get out of hock.

"It's absolutely horrendous," Pizzo says, "that the country cannot live within budgets."

To them, Barack Obama is a socialist in all but name who presides over a bloated government that spends too much of our money while seeking to micromanage our lives.

Public school curriculums, they say, have swapped out patriotism for pabulum; the media are biased; and radicals from the '60s and '70s are running/ruining America. And as for that Occupy movement, let's not go there.

"It's reprehensible, their hatred of those who have achieved," Kramer says. "Redistribution of wealth is the direction . . . [but] the good news is, it has become so blatant that a lot of people are waking up."

To its members, the tea party offers hope.

"What our forefathers had established for us was fading away," Pizzo says. "I really felt something had to be done. And fortunately, there was the tea party."

For me, Gans is speaking irrefutable truths. But I see no way to convince these ladies of that. We are in a political stalemate.

I really have no idea what to do about this situation.