Today last September, "the incomes of the young and middle-aged—especially men—have fallen off a cliff since 2000, leaving many age groups poorer than they were even in the 1970s." The point being, for young workers, for example, when we had a manufacturing base in America in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, you could graduate high school and go out and get a job in a factory. Was it a glamorous job? No. Was it a hard job? Yes. Was it a dirty job? In some cases.
But if you worked in manufacturing, and especially if you had a union behind you, the likelihood is you earned wages to take your family into the middle class, you had decent health care coverage, and you might even have a strong pension. Where are all those jobs now? During the Bush years alone, we went from 19 million jobs in manufacturing to 12 million jobs, a horrendous loss of manufacturing jobs. If you are a kid today in Colorado or Vermont and you are not of a mind, for whatever reason, to go to college—30 or 40 years ago you could go out, get a job in factory, and make some money. Today, what are your options? You can get a minimum wage job at McDonald's or maybe at Walmart, where benefits are minimal or nonexistent. That is a significant transition of the American economy.
I wish to tell you something else, when we talk about manufacturing. It did not get a whole lot of publicity, but it is worth reporting. The good news is, we have recently seen—after the loss of many thousands of jobs in the automobile industry—we have seen the auto companies, Chrysler and others, starting to rehire. What I think has not been widely reported is, the wages of the new workers who are being hired are 50 percent of the wages of the older workers in the plant. You are going to have workers working side by side, where an older worker who has been there for years is making $25, $28 an hour, and right next to him a new hire is making $14 an hour. If you understand that the automobile industry was perhaps the gold standard for manufacturing in America, what do you think is going to happen to the wages of blue-collar workers in the future?
If all you can get with a union behind you in automobile manufacturing is $14 an hour today, what are you going to make in Colorado or in Vermont? Are you going to make $10 an hour or $11 an hour? Is that enough money on which to raise a family? Are you going to have any benefits? Unlikely.
That is what happens when your manufacturing base disappears and that, to a significant degree, in my view, is a result of a disastrous trade policy. I have to tell you—and I think in hindsight most people agree I was right—when I was in the House and all the corporations in the world were telling us how great NAFTA would be, free trade with Mexico, I did not buy it. I was right. They would say: Oh, it is going to be even better. We will have free trade with China. Think about how large China is and all the American products they are going to buy over there to create all kinds of jobs in the United States. I never believed it for a moment.
I will tell you a story. I was in China a number of years ago and as part of a congressional delegation we went to visit Walmart in China. The Walmart store, amazingly enough, looked a lot like Walmart in America—different products, but it looked like the same style. You walk up and down the aisles and you see all these American products. I remember Wilson basketballs, Procter & Gamble soap products—different products there for the Chinese, but a lot of the products were American products. They looked pretty familiar.
I asked the guy who was there with us who was, I believe, the head of Walmart Asia—the guy in charge of all the Walmarts in Asia—I asked him a simple question: Tell me, how many of these American company products are actually manufactured in the United States?
He was a little bit sheepish and a little bit hesitant and he said: Well, about 1 percent. Obviously, what everybody knew, it is a lot cheaper for the American companies to set up plants in China, hire Chinese workers at 50 cents an hour, 75 cents an hour, whatever it is, and have them build the product for the Chinese markets than it is to pay American workers $15 an hour, $20 an hour, provide health insurance, deal with the union, deal with the environment. That is not a great revelation. I think anybody could have figured that one out. But the big money interests around here pushed it and Congress and President Clinton, at that time, signed it and we were off and running.
When we look at why the middle class is in the shape it is—and it is important to make sure everybody understands it because one of the things that happens in this world, it is human nature I suppose, is that people feel very guilty and responsible if they are not taking care of their families. Right now we know, with unemployment so high—this is not just cold statistics we are throwing out. These are people who not only were earning an income that supported their families, they had a sense of worth. Every human being wants to be productive. They want to produce something. They want to be part of something. They want to go to work, earn a paycheck, bring it home. You feel good about that.
Do you know what it does to somebody's sense of human worth when suddenly you are sitting home watching the TV, you can't go out and earn a living? It destroys people. People be come alcoholic. People commit suicide. People have mental breakdowns because they are not utilizing their skills. They are no longer being a productive member of society. That is what unemployment is about.
I think one of the reasons unemployment is so high, one of the reasons the middle class is collapsing, has a lot to do with these disastrous trade policies. I have to tell you, as we have been talking about all day long, these policies, these tax breaks, all this stuff emanates from corporate leaders whose sense of responsibility is such that they want themselves to become richer, they want more and more profits for their company, but they could care less about the needs of the American people.
I remember there was one CEO of a large, one of our largest American corporations, and he said: When I look at the future of General Electric, I see China, China, China, and China. By the way, we ended up bailing out that particular corporation. He didn't look to China to get bailed out, he looked to the taxpayers of this country.
But the word has to get out to corporate America, they are going to have to start reinvesting in the United States of America. They are going to have to start building the products and the goods the American people need rather than run all over in search of cheap labor. That is an absolute imperative if we are going to turn this economy around.
According to a Boston Globe article published last year—let me quote what they say. Again, I am trying to document here what is happening to the working class of America because I do not want individual workers, somebody who may be hearing this on the TV, the radio, to say: It is my fault. There is something wrong with me because I can't go out and get a job.
You are not alone. The entire middle class is collapsing. Our economy is shedding millions and millions of jobs. I know there are people out there trying hard to find work, but that work is just not there. That is why we have to rebuild the economy and create jobs. This is what the Boston Globe said last year: "The recession has been more like a depression for blue-collar workers. . . ."
This is an important point to be made here. When we talk about the economy we kind of lump everybody together. That is wrong. The truth is right now in the economy people on top are doing very well. The unemployment rate for upper income people is very low. They are doing OK. That as opposed, as this Boston Globe article points out, to what is happening to blue collar workers: "The recession has been more like a depression for blue-collar workers, who are losing jobs much more quickly than the nation as a whole. . . ."
This is the working class of America. ". . . the Nation's blue-collar industries have slashed one in six jobs since 2007. . . ." Let me repeat that. It is just astronomical, a fact.
. . . the nation's blue-collar industries [manufacturing] have slashed one in six jobs since 2007, compared with about one in 20 for all industries, leaving scores of the unemployed competing for the rare job opening in construction or manufacturing, with many unlikely to work in those fields again.
