I found the article, The U.S. Has Waged A War On Jobs, on the CNN/Fortune web site. Surprisingly, it is not the expected diatribe against government.
As long as Wall Street and venture capitalists continue to reward corporations for off-shoring and downsizing, we continue to play the fool when we express shock that the U.S. economy is not creating many new jobs.
…One can speculate on how this situation came to be — the role of business schools and their emphasis on maximizing shareholder value, the weakening of organizations that represent employee interests (e.g. unions), a growing preoccupation with deficits over economic growth, and so forth. But the implication seems inescapable: as long as we wage war on jobs, we shouldn’t be surprised when we don’t create many of them.
This is a nice complement to what I have been posting on this blog about what the true jobs killer is.
I would add to the author’s speculation as to causes, the issue of the free rider problem. The investors are getting a free ride from the environment that exists in the United States for formulating business ideas and getting them funded, but many of the benefits to people below the executive office go to other countries. It won’t be long before the fruitful environment shifts from the United States to the countries receiving the current benefits. Then the cycle will start again with the old winners becoming the new losers, and a new set of winners arising.
As is well noted, any individual playing the free rider game benefits, but the society as a whole loses. Unfortunately, there is no reason why any individual should forgo the benefit of being a free rider. For any single individual to give up the benefit would not be profitable. That person’s benefit would just be given to another free rider, and the society wouldn’t be any better off. We need to figure another way to make it beneficial to not be a free rider. Societies have been trying to figure this out for thousands of years.
Somehow, I don’t think that A Solution to the Free Rider Problem — Mind Reading is truly a solution.